


détente

by AnnaofAza, missbecky



Category: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - All Media Types, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John Le Carré
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-25 20:13:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12540268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnaofAza/pseuds/AnnaofAza, https://archiveofourown.org/users/missbecky/pseuds/missbecky
Summary: The trade goes as planned, and Bill Haydon is spirited away to Russia, hailed as a hero and then quickly forgotten. He's resigned himself to living an unextraordinary, dull existence until he realizes he's being watched...





	détente

All too soon, it's clear to everyone involved that Bill Haydon is through talking. He told his story to Smiley—the parts of it he wanted to tell—and now he is finished. There is nothing more to talk about.  
  
Under normal circumstances this would never be permitted, of course. And the Sarratt inquisitors do their best. But it's wasted effort. He's an embarrassment to them all, a liability. And Karla wants the trade as much as Smiley does. In the end it all happens very fast, very neatly.  
  
So Bill finally finds himself in his adopted country, only to discover that the reality is nothing like he planned. He goes from one interrogation to another, more rounds of endless questions, tape recorders, and ashtrays overflowing with cigarettes, smoke hanging heavy in the air.

It takes months to mine every detail from his memory. And at the end of it, they thank him for his service, then give him a dacha in the Moscow forest, where the other Soviet elites make their home. The house is small, always cold, and is, of course, bugged.

Along with the key to the house, he's granted a medal and the title Hero of the Soviet Union—but no one can ever know. He's forever followed, for his own protection, of course.

After so many years playing his dangerous game, he's perpetually bored. He potters around in the garden behind the dacha, works on some truly terrible paintings, attends Party meetings, and gets drunk a lot.

He knows what they think of him, the ones assigned to watch over him. They think he’s old, largely useless, a relic. The worst part is that they aren't too far off the mark. It’s a disillusioned ending to an illustrious career, and most mornings Bill wakes up with a bitter taste in his mouth he can’t even blame on the alcohol he had the night before.

This is his life in the East.

****

It’s hard to know for sure when the change happens. It’s a gradual thing, like glimpsing something out of the corner of his eye that might not even be there. At first he thinks he’s imagining it, that in his boredom, his mind is trying to recreate his old life, down to the paranoia that ruled his time in the trade. But eventually, he can no longer ignore the truth.

Someone is watching him.

This is not one of his regular minders, that group of operatives Karla has assigned as his guard dogs. He recognises the weight of this unseen stare, the silent footsteps of the invisible follower.

Then, one day, he’s out for a walk when he discovers he’s stopped on the path, staring blankly at a scrap of cloth caught in a tree for quite some time without even realising it. It’s a signal, one he used to know quite well.

After that, it’s like a dam breaking. He spots them everywhere, the old signs and signals. Tells not seen in decades, from when he was in the field as a young man.

And at last, he can no longer deny what he’s known for weeks. Jim Prideaux is watching him.

The realisation is at once terrifying and wholly expected. Jim is out there, wanting to make contact, but why? Is this revenge? Justice? Does Jim want an accounting of himself? Bill doesn't know, can’t even begin to guess what is going through Jim’s mind right now.

But he has to find out.

****

The first thing he realises is that he has to find a way to throw off his minders so he can meet Jim. He knows it won’t be easy. Even after all these years, Karla's got an eye on him.

So, he plans. He and Jim had secret codes as agents, and before, they had ones they created together at Oxford. But those were often the silent, body language sort, and he's sure someone will figure out the purposely mangled Latin used for nothing more than to pass notes back and forth. No, any code they use must necessarily come from Jim, providing the parameters for any contact between them.

Long before Operation Testify, before the downfall of Control, there was an agent sent to the East to infiltrate them while giving every appearance of wanting to defect. During the long hours when there is nothing to do but watch the sky as autumn turns to winter, Bill remembers Leamas and the meticulous planning that went into that operation—plans he had dutifully passed along to Karla, of course.

It worked then, so he decides it will work now, too. He doesn't want to—oh, his pride, but also, he thinks, well, perhaps if he is of some use, he'd be able to do more than sit around for Karla for the rest of his life—but he must take that into account, to be seen as someone not worth following. He must become more washed up, more useless than before.

He starts going into the city. He spends a lot of time and even more money at expensive bars, drinking everything in sight and letting himself be seen. He earns a reputation as a drunk, and though it stings his pride, in a terrible way it feels good to have a reputation of _some_ kind again. He remembers Leamas, and he lives the lie, makes it real. It gives him a reason to go out, to let Jim see him; always, as he walks up his driveway, he wonders if Jim is out there, watching him.

He takes home alcohol wrapped in paper bags. He doesn't always drink them, but he puts aside a few bottles of the nicer vodka, just in case. He thinks about starting fights, slurring his words and punching clumsily, but for now, it's better to just be someone slow and harmless. He even trips a few times in the street for authenticity.

Nothing happens at first. His minders eye him with growing disgust, although, of course, they don’t dare say anything to him. They think of him with contempt now, and though it fills him with resentment, he’s glad to see them relax somewhat as they accept the fact that he's just an old drunk now.

The signals stop appearing. There are no more tells. But that sense of being watched is stronger than ever.

Jim is close. He can feel it.

****

Then, one morning, he walks out to get his mail, staggering a little under grey skies that threaten snow. He reaches the end of the driveway, then stops dead.

There is a mark on the kerb below the mailbox. it could just be a scuff, a random anything. But he knows this particular sign very well. It's a request to meet.

He opens the mailbox, retrieves its contents, and goes back inside. He shuts the door behind him, and then he just stands for a moment, the door at his back and his heart pounding so hard he thinks the bugs planted throughout the house must surely pick it up.

All day, Bill keeps picturing it, that innocent mark that means so much. It’s Jim. It has to be.

He moves through the day in a daze, hardly having to pretend to be less than sober. At night, he lies awake for hours, pondering his response. After weeks of surveillance, he has finally had contact from Jim. But what does it mean? If he agrees to the meeting, will he be going willingly to his own murder? Is this betrayal, one he's well-earned?

Or is it real?

If he's going to die, part of him feels that it's almost fair. After everything, after the way he's been shuttled off to be a shut-in, after he's been brought so low, well...why not? It’s not like there’s anything else for him here.

But he sincerely hopes Jim will talk to him. Even if he doesn't know what the hell he can even say.

The next morning, he shuffles out to the mailbox, squinting against the light, grimacing as his boots crunch on the newly fallen snow, just an old man nursing a hangover. He checks the mail and rubs one foot against the mark on the kerb, erasing it and sending a signal of his own. Yes, it is safe to meet.

And then he waits.

For a couple days, there is nothing. Then one night at a bar a random woman chats him up. She does her best to get Bill to come home with her, even throwing an arm around him. She is too quick, though, too nervous, and he feels right away when her hand slips into his coat pocket. To cover her lapse, he turns her down rather unkindly and orders another vodka.

He doesn’t read the note until he gets home that night, turning the television on loudly to mask the sound of paper crackling as it’s unfolded.

The note is in Jim's handwriting. It’s just a long string of numbers, complete gibberish to anyone who doesn't know their private code.

It takes Bill a matter of minutes to decode it. He doesn’t write any of it down, just memorises the actual information contained in the note, then pitches it quietly into the dacha’s small stove.

Coordinates. A date and time, then a second date. A fallback if they can't make the first meeting.

Bill looks up the location named in the note. It turns out to be a lake in the forest, about an hour from his snug little dacha with its garden in the back. He turns away from the map, already working out a plan.

There is no question of not going.

It will mean some creative driving to lose his watchers, but he's not too worried about that. It's more what awaits him at that lake that makes him wonder. Too much has happened since he last spoke to Jim, and very little of it is good. More than likely he is simply helping to arrange his own execution.

But he can’t not go. He can’t let this chance to see Jim again pass him by. Not when Jim has come here at great risk to his safety, hiding away somewhere, coming out only to leave signals, to make Bill aware of his presence. Every day he is here, he is in danger. They must meet, if only so Jim can accomplish what he came here for and leave again, returning to the security of England.

He starts wandering around town aimlessly, getting into the cheap jalopy Karla had deigned to give him, something that gets around the local area but never any further. He still keeps a bottle in the front seat to swig on, just to keep the ruse going, but he has to remind himself to do it now, to _act_. Already he’s retreated to the intellectual, to the mental activity that is the true work of a spy.

On the days leading up to their meeting, Bill plans for everything, building up worst case scenarios in his head and coming up with solutions. The only option he doesn’t ever seriously consider is the one he should have done from the start: mention all this to his minders and have them pass the information on to Karla and so secure Jim’s arrest.

He starts painting in the garden, cursing the cold and snow, aware that he looks the fool. It grates, but he suffers the quiet laughter from his minders in the knowledge that it only adds to his deception. Let them see him painting. Let them think he’s so domesticated, so blunted, that he’s willing to endure the cold just for some entertainment.

He drives out to various locations around Moscow and sets up his easel. He complains to his minders that he needs better paints, larger canvases. He buys more vodka and drinks half of it and spills half of it down the sink so the empty bottles will accumulate in the rubbish.

These supplies arrive dutifully, along with his groceries. The Hero of the Soviet Union needn’t venture out among the common folk for pitiful rations, scanning the aisles and trying to choose between the only two brands of bread. In many ways, he is very lucky, but Bill remembers simply taking his bike and pedaling down to the shop the next street over to spend a few thoughtful minutes choosing the right shades, the right brush, the right canvas.

He doesn’t dare to drive out to the lake itself, not even as a failsafe for getting lost. Jim may be nearby or camped out there; who knows? He cannot lead anyone to Jim.

But Bill keeps reviewing his plans from the moment he wakes up to when he settles down for bed, building up the confidence to a point where he believes he might succeed. He _will_ go, and the only thing that will prevent it is if his minders can’t be shaken off. Otherwise, it's fair game.

The only thing he doesn’t plan is what he will say. Some things simply cannot be rehearsed. There can never be an apology for what he did, but maybe there can be amends. An explanation. He owes Jim that much at least.

****

On the morning of the first meeting, he wakes up early. It’s cold out, with a snow forecast later in the day. Not a day to be outdoors, especially not a day for something as ridiculous as painting, but that can’t be helped. Hopefully, his minders will curse the cold and stay indoors or keep watch from their heated car, letting their guard slip to concentrate on being warm.

Bill packs up his art supplies, oil paints, cracked easel, and brushes, bundling up in as many layers as he can before stepping outside. If they confront him about shaking off his watchers, he'll say an artist needs privacy to work unfettered.

He allows himself to think of the gun in the glove compartment. He hasn't had much practice of late, but he'll make it work. He has to. 

There’s a brief start in his chest when the engine turns over, as he quietly backs out of the driveway and begins moving towards the road, making it look like one of those meandering days. He’s very well aware that he’s nearly three hours early, but if something goes wrong, he’d like to have some adequate time to deal with it.

Bill occasionally pulls over, steps out of the car as if surveying the space, then keeps driving. Sometimes, he even sets up his easel and paints for a few minutes, dabbing a little before dramatically shaking his head and loading his supplies back into the car. He goes back the way he came, makes a few turns, stops and gets back in, and keeps it up until he can no longer hear their engine or see their headlights in the rearview mirror.

So, finally, finally, he makes it to the lake, briefly worrying that he’s missed the time, but after a quick glance at the clock, he’s relieved to see he’s still a bit early.

With that, Bill begins pulling out his supplies to set up shop. He remembers stealing outside to paint during the Oxford years, sometimes dropping what he had to sketch something that caught his eye. Jim always was the most tolerant of this habit, stopping obligingly and sometimes even pulling out a book to study while Bill bent over his work.

Half an hour before the scheduled time, he feels the unmistakable sensation of being watched. He knows it's Jim, making sure he's alone, that this isn't a trap.

But he's not so sure it isn't a trap anyway—that at any moment, he'll hear the rifle crack, a split second before the bullet finds him.

He continues painting, outwardly calm on the outside, squinting through the little sunlight to catch the right colour to add to the lake. But inside, he's tensed, ready to spring. He wants to throw down the brush and reach for the gun, now hidden in his bag.

But he doesn't. Stay calm, or you're dead. It's a lesson agents always learn sooner or later.

An hour passes. Jim doesn't show. The painting progresses, a decent landscape, and after a while, Bill realises he no longer feels like he's being watched.

Jim has gone.

He ponders it all the way back to the dacha that is never warm, even in summer. Bill unloads his supplies, practically throwing them all on the kitchen table before snatching up a bottle of vodka. With a series of furious twists, the lid clatters to the floor, and Bill drinks, disappointment and frustration tangling in his chest. Why would Jim do this? What in hell was all this for?

For the rest of the day, he paces, eats little, and leaves everything on the table as it is, mind clearing little by little until the anger and drink fade away.   

It was a test, he finally decides later that evening. The second meeting time wasn't the fallback. It's the real thing—provided he passed the test.

He knows what to do. More aimless wandering. More drinking—faked or otherwise. More idle painting. Off and on, he's thought of being a wandering artist, a vagabond, and he now has his chance, albeit in circumstances he's never thought of before.

He's memorised the second meeting information, numbers burned into his mind. Bill still doesn't know what Jim exactly wants. But he supposes he'll see the next time.

****

The appointed day is cold but clear. He packs up the car and drives out, same as before. It's easy by now to elude the watchers; they didn’t even scold him for it the last time.

There is ice on the edges of the lake today. It's far too cold to paint, but he doesn't let that stop him. He gets set up as before—easel, canvas, paints, brushes—and begins his work. Everything is crisp and white with the newly fallen snow on the dark green trees and the hard, packed ground; it’s almost a pity to leave footprints.   

And within half an hour, he knows Jim is there.

He keeps painting, even if it's somewhat clumsier with gloves on his fingers. He's shivering in his coat, his scarf, but he must soldier on, as it were.

Finally, just as he thinks Jim's going to let him freeze to death, Bill hears footsteps crunching on the frostbitten dirt, coming towards him.

He hasn't seen Jim in person since the night Jim came to warm him before Czecho. He looks up now, the painting forgotten, and he sees the uneven gait, the hunched back visible even through the heavy coat.

He did those things.

And though he has no regrets for what he did, he wishes then that he could have done anything to have Control send someone else. Anyone but Jim. He honestly doesn't think he'd feel this tangled up if, say, Percy went in Jim's place. He'd even welcome it.

Which, most likely, simply proves his lack of regrets about betraying his—Britain. Not his country—his country is the one who betrayed him first. He was only returning the favour.

But Jim—if only he weren't so English.

Jim walks up to the lake as though he were out for a stroll. His hands are deep in his pockets.  Bill watches him approach, his heart racing. Though he doesn’t move, he is tense all over, ready to bolt. He has an exit strategy, of course, not that it will do him much good. They are too exposed out here; there is nowhere to run.

"Good morning," Bill says in English, keeping up the charade, though he doesn't know why. There is no one else around, no one to witness them or hear what they are saying. But subterfuge comes easy to him, and it’s part of the game; if they had had the ability to arrange a word code, they would be using it now intead of this stilted small talk.

And the deception gives him a chance to be someone else for a little while longer, not the man who was responsible for getting his lover captured and tortured.

Jim turns toward him. "You're an artist?" His voice hasn't changed, still dear to Bill's hearing.

“Yes," Bill says. "All my life." He finally remembers what he’s supposed to be doing and returns to his painting, even though he so much wants to look Jim full in the face. "But I lapsed...until now."

Jim nods politely. Still no verbal response, but Bill pushes on: "What do you do?"

"I'm a teacher," Jim says. "Or I was. I guess I lapsed, too."

Bill dabs a little paint on the canvas. He nods. Still in that same tone of polite friendliness, he says,  "I suppose you're here to kill me, then."

They always did work best when they were honest with each other. Well, as honest as Bill could be.

Jim looks around, as if casually scanning the trees.

"No one is here," Bill says, keeping his eyes on his painting.

"No," Jim softly echoes, but he doesn't step forward.

The tension is unbearable. Is he waiting for a bullet from the trees? For Jim to say his name? He doesn't know, doesn't even know what he wants at this point

He wants to get whatever—the bullet, the condemnation, the...what else?—over with so he knows what to do. He's felt fumble-footed before—rarely, he would like to say—but Jim always seems to confound his expectations.

Then let him confound expectation, too. Bill subtly shifts his grip on the paintbrush so the pointed end of the handle is now aimed outward. As a weapon, it will be poor, but anything is better than nothing.

He looks up at Jim. Finally. "Did they send you?"

Jim laughs bitterly. He hasn’t changed much, not outwardly. Still the same thinning hair, the same long face. He seems a little thinner, but it’s difficult to tell with his thick coat. " _They_ haven't had anything to do with me for years." He looks around again, eyes flickering briefly to the paintbrush in Bill's hand. "Didn't you know? They threw me out."

Of course Bill had known. He had insisted they give Jim a life with some dignity. He had remembered that Jim did a little teaching after the war and suggested it, hoping the old vocation would give Jim at least some measure of satisfaction. Percy had only been too glad to jump at the chance; Jim was an embarrassment, a dirty little secret they needed to be rid of.

But that was years ago. Things change. Smiley must be Control now, riding his victory over Bill to the top of the fifth floor. Percy will be out, along with Toby and probably Bland. Smiley will want his own people around. Why not bring Jim back? If Jim would have them, of course.

He can't decide if he's relieved or not to learn Jim isn't with the Circus anymore, assuming, of course, that he's telling the truth.

"I knew," Bill says softly. "But I had assumed they'd want one of their best agents back."

Jim glares at him. His fists are clenched tightly in his pockets now. "Flattery will get you nowhere, Bill. And besides," he tilts his head, gesturing as much as he can to his back without having to disturb the still-painful wound, "I'm burned. Burned and..." But he doesn't continue.

A better man would say something here. Not an apology, no, because no trite _I'm sorry_ will ever undo what happened to Jim. And he isn't sorry, not really.

He can’t be that better man, though. If Jim has come all this way and gone through all this just for an apology, he will be leaving empty-handed.

But some accounting is required. Some explanation. Why go to all this trouble? Why are they both out here, shivering under skies growing heavy with snow? Bill knows all the tricks of an interrogator, all the ways to get a man to say what you want him to say. But really all he wants is the truth.

"So then why did you come here?" he asks.

Jim juts out his chin. "To see you." His eyes trace up and down Bill's ratty clothes, the morning stubble, the greasy hair, and Bill remembers the days of coiffed hair and elegant suits with a prickle of faint pride, then regret for how things have changed. Jim looks at him, dark eyes narrowing, his next words accusing: “Since there wasn’t a chance before.”

Bill is well aware that the last time they saw each other was before the Testify mission, Jim’s face mostly shadowed in the dark, shoulders hunched because of the secrecy of the visit, not because of bullet wounds. "I was going to visit you at Sarratt."

He _had_ actually planned to go, even though he had known it would be the worst mistake he could make. But it would have looked strange if he _didn't_ go, and at that point he had been ordered to lie as low as possible and not draw attention to himself. So he had squared his shoulders and made all outward plans to head to Sarratt.

In the end though, it hadn't been necessary. Control’s rapid decline had given him the perfect excuse to join Bland on another humiliating visit with the Americans, and by the time he got back, Jim had already been given his thousand pounds and the Alvis and disappeared into an ordinary life.

 _He asked you about you,_ Toby had said. _I told him you were abroad._

It had even been true. The trip to America had been his reason not to see Jim—or his excuse? What could he have said to Jim anyway, recuperating from months of prolonged torture, torture he’d known Karla had planned to every meticulous detail? It had almost been like clockwork: come in at this hour, ask these questions, and _Bill, do see that you’re dallying with Ann as much as possible, especially when the prisoner breaks and tells us his name_.

He still recalls going to Ann, seeing her delighted face at the sight of him on the doorstep and quickly pulling him inside, as if she still cared about what the neighbours thought. Most of what took place happened in the bedroom—not Smiley’s, a guest one—and Bill tried to lose himself in Ann, in where to put his hands, in how Ann was responding to try to drown out the screams or the babbling answers being yanked from Jim’s mouth.

 _Stay the night?_ she’d asked, running a finger down his chest, and he’d only nodded, mind on Karla’s strict instructions.

He wonders if Jim knows where he was that night, if anyone ever told him. If Jim knows he was having sex in a warm bed while Jim was running for his life through a cold, dark forest and getting shot.

“If you had come to see me at Sarratt,” Jim says, “you wouldn’t have walked out of there alive.” His hands remain in his pockets.

Bill nods. He would have expected no less.

“And now?”

“Now,” Jim says slowly, as if unsure, but resolve quickly hardens his eyes. “Now, I at least deserve to hear what you have to say. About everything.”

 _There’s nothing I can say,_ Bill wants to reply, but he senses Jim will not accept that—or anything else from his lips. There’s no redemption to come from this—and he’s still not sure there can be, or if he wants it. For a quick second, he wants to stand up and rage: _What in hell do you want from me?_ After all this time, he’s not sorry for his actions, and he never will be, so what is the point?

“What can I say,” Bill begins, frustrated, teeth chattering from all the damnable wind blowing right through his layers of clothing, “that will let me walk out of this alive? Nothing, am I correct?”

“I’ll ask the questions,” Jim says. His voice is calm, but the rage is there in his eyes. He always did have a quick temper. Too emotional, they used to laugh. Too quick to anger, too quick to tears.

Quick to pass judgement, too.

“Then ask,” Bill says. He would rather not die here beside a lake in freezing cold, but all things considered, it wouldn’t be such a bad way to go. There are certainly worse possibilities.

“Did you know it would be me?” Jim asks.

And on this one question, if nothing else, he can be truly honest. “No.”

Jim nods, as if Bill’s answer had been nothing more than a polite response to how the weather was going. He steps closer, as if trying to get a better glimpse of the canvas, a rough daub of silvers and greys. “What would you have—” Then his expression twists, lip curling, fists digging further into his pockets. “No. When did you know it was me?”

“When you showed up at my doorstep that night,” Bill says. He can just see Jim standing there, face barely visible in the moonlight, hands buried in his coat pockets, back perfectly straight. The dark circles underneath Jim’s eyes had been almost ghoulish in the dim light. “Before you…”

“Yes,” Jim interrupts. He looks as if he can see that, too, perhaps Bill opening the door, blinking away sleep in nothing more than his robe and pyjama bottoms, feet still bare, but with fingers resting on the handle of the gun tucked into his waistband.

At first, Bill thought it was Ann, but Ann hardly ever came to him. Then, he’d recalled Jan, whose house she’d allowed him to use for another one of his painting projects, but she wouldn’t be up at this hour, not with her son. The sailor boy, he’d guessed, just before opening the door.

But Bill had been wrong, of course.

“Did you…” Jim stops himself. One hand rises, briefly visible above his coat pocket, before he shoves it back down, out of sight. He looks angry, disgusted, even. But for the first time Bill gets the impression that his anger is aimed not at him, but at Jim himself.

He knows then what Jim was about to ask, what he couldn’t bring himself to say. _Did you try to stop it once you knew it was me_?

And he’s glad, selfishly glad that the question wasn’t asked, so he doesn’t have to answer it and say out loud what they both already know deep down.

Bill waits for the next question, but Jim only stands there, hands still in his pockets. He’s not even shivering, even though Bill’s shaking like a leaf in this wind, and if this was Oxford, Bill would have reached out and lightly pushed him, making some joke about giant blood and pulling his jacket tighter around his body. Jim hardly wore gloves, so if the quad was clear, Bill would reach out and—

But this is no longer that halcyon era. He cannot take Jim’s hand, touch him so easily with paint-stained hands and soft palms. If he did, he suspects that would give Jim the excuse to break his arm—or worse.

Jim finally asks, eyes still on him: “Why didn’t Karla just kill me? Why send me back? In fact, why did they shoot me if they had to doctor me up to be fit for interrogation?”

“The shooting _wasn’t_ part of the plan,” Bill says quickly, desperation slipping out before he can catch it.

It’s the wrong thing to say. Jim’s eyes go flat. “So only the torture and interrogation were planned?”

Anger comes to his defense. “What did you expect? You were an enemy agent. You knew the risks going in. We all did.”

Jim’s right shoulder jerks; if he physically could, he would be standing with that old ramrod-straight posture. “Yes, we did,” he says quietly.

A gust of wind rises off the lake. Bill shivers and wonders if Jim’s strategy is to make him freeze to death while they stand here. He wants to ask again if Jim is going to kill him, but he lacks the courage to put it in words a second time.

“I just never considered _you_ an enemy agent,” Jim says. “But that was my mistake, wasn’t it?” He steps closer, so close that his scrap of a scarf just brushes the knuckles of Bill’s right hand.

Bill can’t think of a response to that. He’s still stuck there, paintbrush clutched between his fingers, the paint surely slowly freezing like his blood in the middle of a Russian forest. The canvas only shows a play of monotone colours, and he seriously doubts he’ll ever finish it if he makes it home.

And an enemy agent—he’d never made such distinctions with Jim. Jim had been simply _Jim. Ally_ was untrue, _friend_ was dangerous, and more than that could have been catastrophic, if he allowed himself more. _Coworker_ seemed to work. _Comrade_ —well, no. Too Russian to suit Jim.

Too late, he realises how neatly he’s been manoeuvered into the trap. There is only one fate for an enemy agent. The only question is if it’s going to be a bullet to the head or in the back.

He won’t make it easy for Jim, though.

“You couldn’t have known,” he says. It’s something he’s thought about a lot over the years, times when it seemed like Jim was looking at him with more thoughtfulness than usual. Control wasn’t the only one to come close to guessing he was the mole, but he never really fretted about those others. Only with Jim was it something akin to actual worry.

“But what would you have done if you _had_ known?” he asks.

Now it’s Jim’s turn to look uncomfortable. He glances away, toward the lake and the ice that seems to actually be spreading. “I don’t know.”

It’s not like them to be at such a standstill. Even as fellow agents, even during that successful mission decades and decades ago, before Karla had approached him, they’d debated back and forth, just as they did at Oxford. They always wanted the best possible solution, to make this mission go off without a hitch, and neither of them dared to say that it was because of the possibility of being paired up once more.

Bill had planned it that way, and so did Jim, most likely. But then Karla came—and Bill took no more field missions after that. He had to stay safe, away from the crossfires and away from having to directly give up someone in the field. He was destined to be the shadow leader, the golden boy, the one far from even an idle suspicion—that was Karla’s plan for him, and he made it a success.

This way, he’d thought, somewhat naively, that there was no risk of giving up Jim to a bullet, a bomb, a cleverly set trap. It was simply unfolding the Circus piece by piece, allowing them to run in circles without ever suspecting it was more than business as usual. But, of course, he’d quickly known better, as soon as he’d been given orders to burn this or that agent, to vanish them as swiftly as footprints in the snow. He never did it himself, but knew of each one as if he’d been the one to pull the trigger.

“Would you have gone to Smiley? Control?” Bill asks. He sounds almost bored now, looking at Jim with a hint of a challenge in his eyes. “Would you have taken care of it before anyone else knew? Or would you have done exactly what you did? Come to warn me.” As he says it, he knows it’s true. “Give me a chance to flee.”

He doesn’t exactly step forward. It’s more like a leaning in, a gentle sway of his body toward Jim. “Or would you have hoped I would do the right thing? That I would say I was wrong, that I wasted all those years?”

“Didn’t you?” Jim says. He sounds like he’s choking.

 _Of course I didn’t_. That’s what he believes. Or rather, what he truly believed until today, until standing here face to face with Jim Prideaux, the man he once called his other half.

Now he no longer knows.

“No one will know you were here,” he says. “If…” But he can't make himself finish.

“Will you shut up for more than a few seconds?” Jim snaps. “Christ, Bill, you—” He shakes his head, a familiar gesture of a playful _Oh, Bill_ that used to never fail to make them both laugh. But there's a hardened snap to it now, like the jolt before someone’s neck breaks.

Bill keeps his mouth shut, eyes gravitating again to the canvas. Seconds, then minutes tick by, Jim standing over him as his judge, jury, and possibly, executioner.

 _All right,_ he thinks, strangely calm. _All right._

If Jim lets him walk away from this—which is starting to seem a distinct possibility—there’s a decision to be made about what happens next. Are they going to meet again? Does he even _want_ to see Jim again? After all, no good can come of it. And Jim is taking an enormous risk with every day he remains in Russia. Eventually his luck will run out, and this time Bill honestly doesn’t know if he can carry the guilt of having Jim’s pain on his hands.

Slowly, wary of making any fast moves, he sets the paintbrush down. The painting itself is ludicrous, a half-finished monochrome landscape, a scene no one would want to visit long. He has half a notion of tossing it in the lake, but such dramatics are long beyond him, and anyway, canvases are too expensive here; it would take too long to get another.

He starts packing up his things. Jim watches him, making no move to stop him. The wind tosses his scarf, the ends fluttering about his coat. Bill has the ridiculous urge to tell him to wrap it around his neck, and clenches his jaw to remain silent.

“Where are you going?” Jim asks.

“Home,” Bill says. He looks at Jim. “Am I going to see you again?”

“I can’t stay for very long,” Jim says. “I have to move on.”

“Will you go back to England?” Bill asks, carefully wiping his brush onto the inside of his jacket. He remembers the chipped mugs and napkins at his old flat, but it doesn’t matter anyway. No one will see this, let alone comment on it. Percy used to make light jabs if Bill’s tie wasn’t straight—well, he’d have a field day now.

“That’s where I should be.” Jim’s still watching, eyes taking in the meagre supply of paint tubes, squeezed of much of their contents. He’s making mental notes, surely, the old habits having not left him all these years, though Bill wouldn’t know who he’d even report them to.

“Yes,” Bill agrees. He can’t imagine Jim at home anywhere else. Certainly not here. Not in enemy territory, not where he got shot. Jim is English through and through, and that’s something Bill had always known, borrowing some of Jim for himself when his loathing for Britain and its weakening prow grew too strong for present company.

They don’t speak after that. Jim just stands there while Bill loads the boot of the car, a wheezy thing that was old ten years ago. He walks around the car, uncertain what to say. In their chosen profession, any chance meeting could be the last, any innocuous statement a final line. After a while one doesn’t even think about it anymore: it’s just life, just how it is.

But this is a genuine farewell. This is the last time he will ever see Jim and he knows it. It’s an occasion that should be marked by something, some solemn words, perhaps even a handshake.

The thought makes him want to laugh.

“Good luck,” he says. “If you need help getting out…”

“I’ll be fine,” Jim says curtly, and of course he will. Still, Bill had to offer.

They stand there, awkward and silent. Bill thinks of pre-dawn mornings at Oxford, himself barely awake, Jim flashing past as he ran circuits, skin gleaming with sweat. Freezing winters in France, cursing as stiff fingers fumbled with matches to light a fire, Jim wrapped around him from behind. Heavenly two weeks in the south of Spain, warm breezes carrying the scent of lemons, lunch with a different new courier for their network every other day, and nights spent in Jim’s arms.

He thinks of Jim standing there in the moonlight on his front step, come to warn him about Testify even though he must have known the truth deep down.

He smiles a little. For old time’s sake. For what they had once.

Jim does not smile back. He nods.

Bill gets in the car and drives away.

****

“Home” is cold and smells of yesterday’s lunch. He doesn’t even bother unloading the canvas and supplies from the car, just stomps inside and slams the door shut. There’s a bottle with some liquid still in it on the counter. He thinks he might just finish it off.

He hates this house, even though he never forgets that the vast majority of Russians would consider it the height of luxury. It makes him miss his place outside London and the creature comforts he once had. Life in England, it seems, wasn’t _all_ bad.

He’s had a lot of time since coming to Russia. Long enough to learn that he can live without a surprising number of things he always took for granted, things he thought he could never give up. Attention, the hero worship of subordinates, good Scotch, easy access to anything he wanted, tailored suits, the ability to go anywhere he wanted at any time.

But he’s just realising now that living without Jim may be the hardest thing of them all.

Part of him wants to believe Jim will be back. Perhaps they can arrange another time, a few weeks or even months from now. It'll be another scuff near the mailbox or a set of numbers from a pretty Russian woman, someone he would have taken home without hesitation only a year ago. Karla said he had to be with Ann, but not exclusively, and anyway what did it matter? Ann saw others besides Bill, besides Smiley, every week. As he told Smiley, he was only joining the queue.

Sometimes, he went to the house in a part of London where no one really knew who he was, or to Jan, who always made him a cup of tea near a roaring fire, putting her boy to bed as soon as he walked through the door. Sometimes, he visited the sailor boy who always greeted him with a sullen frown at his evasiveness but always allowed him inside the flat he shared with two other roommates. Sometimes, Bill didn't bother—just went home and retired to the quiet, dark bedroom, occasionally sketching a little before falling asleep.

But all these years, he'd never gone to Jim, and he wished he had, even for a warm night in the sheets that would return to polite coworkers in the morning. With a start, Bill realises he can't remember the last long conversation he had with him that had nothing to do with work.

And most likely, he'll never have another one again. He and Jim said their pieces, found some answers, got to look at each other outside the Circus and cat-and-mouse game they'd played for years. He wants more—always has—but what does _more_ mean now?

He’s just closing his fingers around the neck of the bottle when there's a knock on the door.

For a brief moment, he thinks of Jim, but no, this is the rapid-fire pulse that means the person—or people—on the other side are ready to kick down the door, regardless of how inconvenient it'll make for living in this damnable Russian winter. Absurdly, Bill thinks of scribbling _replacement door_ on his weekly list of groceries before he looks around the room.

Stupidly, he left his gun in the glove compartment. No matter, no matter—there's an iron poker for stoking his meagre stove and another cracked easel. Sword and shield—that's the way to do it.

He starts to set the bottle down, then changes his mind.  Already he has a story at the ready. A few of them, actually, but only the seed. That’s how the best lies are sold: start small and let the rest unfold naturally.

There are two of them at the door. Of his rotating crew of minders, they are the two Bill dislikes the most. He knows their names and histories, but he always just thinks of them as Sergei and Ivan, the most Russian names they could have—although not their actual names, of course. They think of him as a washed-up drunk, and it makes no difference that he has encouraged this facade. They are merely a reminder of what he gave up to come here, and how different this reality is from how he had imagined it might be.

They both walk into the house without a word. Sergei takes a position in the doorway between the kitchen and the front room. Ivan lingers, looking at the bottle Bill clutches, then his shabby state; he’s still wearing his coat, he realises.

“Where were you this morning?” asks Ivan. He speaks Russian. They always do, though Bill knows for a fact they are both fluent in English.

 _Out,_ Bill’s tempted to say, but knows better.

“I just drove aways from my house to paint a lake,” he says calmly, also in Russian, with a hint of bleary confusion. Bill gestures towards the doorway with the bottle, allowing the liquid to splatter carelessly onto the wooden floorboards. “See for yourself. I didn’t bring my supplies inside.”

Neither Sergei or Ivan move, not even to turn their heads. Bill brings the bottle up to his lips to take a quick swig. If one of them stepped out of this house to check to see if his story was true, he’d have a better chance. Out of the two, he prefers Sergei, weedy even with the layers of coats, over Ivan, shoulders as wide as Jim’s, though both men are still dangerous; what’s more, they very likely have guns on them.

They can’t simply shoot him right here, though? Hero of the Soviet Union: Karla’s personal gift. Surely they’re just here to give him a scolding, tell him not to ditch them again. Surely he has some time, some small measure of security?

“We will accompany you next time,” says Ivan. He speaks slowly, patiently, as he would to a stubborn child. “This is for your own safety.”

In the doorway, Sergei nods. Bill sees this and is hard pressed to hide his anger. He and Karla had a discussion about this very thing long before he was given the dacha. How Karla wanted to ensure his safety, how he must take every precaution, how he should never go out without someone to watch over him. For his own sake, of course.

“Sure,” Bill says carelessly. He raises the bottle. “But I could use a little more of this.”

Sergei and Ivan exchange a look. Neither one of them moves.

Bill tightens his grip on the bottle; it’s a much better weapon than the paintbrush he was holding earlier. Of the two of them, Sergei is closer, which makes him assume that Ivan will actually be the first one to approach.

He takes another sip of the vodka. As he lowers the bottle, he angles his body ever so slightly toward Ivan. “Well?”

Again, neither of them move, but Bill keeps his face slow and stupid, shaking the bottle like a rattle towards them. _Come closer,_ he thinks. _Closer._

Of course, what’s a bottle next to a gun? But if he’s going down, well, never let it be said Bill Haydon went down without a fight first.

He pictures the next few moments: Sergei will take another step, Bill will bring the bottle back and down with a crash, vodka will be spilled in a dramatic burst, and Ivan will fire the gun that’s hidden behind his back. One of the things the army had drilled into him was the acceptance of getting shot. If there’s a gun, there will be a shot, no avoiding it, so best to deal with that fear so it doesn’t freeze you up later. Bill’s very, very certain this will happen.

What does is almost exactly as he imagined—with an exception.

Sergei does approach, and it is indeed cover for Ivan, who moves in fast, with a speed that’s surprising for someone his size. Bill is caught off guard, and when he hurls the bottle, it lands harmlessly at Sergei’s feet, spraying vodka on the floor instead of glass in vulnerable skin.

Then Ivan is there in a flurry of motion, and Bill has no time for anything but defending himself. He manages to get in a couple blocks and one good swing, but Ivan is younger and stronger. A punch to the stomach doubles him over, and then a fist clubs him on the back, driving him to the floor.

“You will listen to us now,” Sergei says. He still stands apart from it all, seemingly uninterested in physical violence.

The hell with that. Bill starts to rise, and Ivan moves in again. This time, it’s to deliver a brutal kick, hard enough to smash him down again, shockwaves of pain pulsing through his left side and stealing his breath.

Compared to how fast he’s done everything else, there’s a sharp contrast to how slowly Ivan brings the gun around. It must have been tucked into the waistband of his jeans this whole time, covered by his coat. There’s plenty of time for Bill to be amazed, outraged, even angry. After all he’s done for this bloody country. And this is his reward.

He hurts too much to stand, but he’ll be damned if he meekly accepts his death lying on the kitchen floor, inches from a puddle of vodka and broken glass. He manages to sit up on a gasp of pain, then glares up at Ivan, daring him to pull the trigger.

The shot is very loud in the small kitchen. The pain is, too, and despite years of training, Bill cries out, flinching back hard against the wall and clutching at his right arm.

“You should be more careful when you paint alone,” Ivan says. He still speaks in that slow, careful manner. “Accidents can happen that way.”

“It would be a shame if you could not paint anymore,” Sergei says with mock sorrow. “Perhaps you should stay inside for a little while. It’s for the best, really.”

They turn away, dismissing him already.

As far as warnings go, it’s definitely not the most subtle.

Bill stays where he is, squeezing at his arm with his bare hand. It takes everything in him not to fly at them, charging clumsily before being swatted away. Humiliation presses white hot in his chest, a pain almost as bad as the sharp sting of his injuries. He knows very well he was lucky to get off this well—and hates it.

Just as Ivan’s foot steps across the threshold, a shot bursts cleanly through the still Russian air.

Bill flinches, ready for another flash of pain, but he doesn’t feel a thing. All he can do is stare mutely when Ivan, swearing harshly in Russian, clutches at the upper left side of his chest, blood already seeping through the layers of his clothes. He bends over, doubled in pain, actually stamping one of his feet once on the ground.  

Sergei immediately redraws his gun, aiming it towards where Bill knows are a copse of close-together trees, black branches empty this time of year. He slowly begins to walk outside, head swiveling, snow crunching ever so softly underneath his double-knotted boots, eyes surely narrowed in focus. His finger is on the trigger, steady and sure.  

Bill stays where he is, unmoving despite the frantic pounding of his heart, as Ivan turns to him, eyes fierce. “ _You_ ,” he snarls.

 _No,_ Bill thinks, but he holds his ground, even while clutching at his rather useless right arm. The dark bloodstain is spreading outward, faster and faster, but Ivan still reaches for his own weapon—before Sergei lets out a pained grunt, loud enough to be heard from outside the house.

Ivan turns, attention focused to the threat outside, as Bill hears the unmistakable sound of a series of gunshots.

“Stay there,” Ivan commands. He’s bleeding out, already dying, but even now, he performs the duty Karla tasked him with: protecting the Hero of the Soviet Union.

Bill stays where he is as Ivan stumbles toward the front of the house. He waits only long enough for Ivan to disappear from view before pushing himself off the wall with a pained grunt. He stays close to its illusory protection though as he steps over the broken glass and spilled vodka, moving silently into the front room.

The door is open; cold wind whips through the room. Ivan is nearly at the door, using it for cover as he creeps forward, blood trailing from the fingers of one hand, the other holding his weapon. He has eyes only for whatever—whoever—is outside.

Still hugging the wall, Bill eases toward the fireplace. The iron poker resting there fits satisfyingly in his left hand, a solid weight much more reassuring than the vodka bottle.

Someone has to move first. Either Ivan steps out from behind the door, or the shooter outside advances on the house.

Bill walks right out into the room. He passes by the large front window as he goes, but no shots ring out. Whoever is out there, he is clearly not their intended target.

Ivan spots the motion out of the corner of his eye. His head whips around as he glares. “Get down!” he yells.

The poker’s swing is even more satisfying than its weight. Ivan reels, blood spraying from his shattered nose and mouth. As he staggers out from behind the cover of the front door, a single shot rings out from the cold stillness outside the dacha.

Ivan drops.

Bill still holds the poker, chest heaving. If he’s not the target, he can exit without being shot at. On the other hand, he can still be clipped by a stray bullet, and he’d prefer not to get shot twice.

However, whoever emerges victorious will enter the dacha, and Bill will have to contend with them alone, trapped in his own home. His right arm is in no shape to fight, his ribs hinder the possibility of another fight or even running, his bodyguard—one who would have surely sent him off to Karla without hesitation—is dead, and and whoever is out there will be the best man. Should he venture out to meet his possible demise or confront it head-on?

Resolutely, his fingers squeeze tighter around the poker as his feet slowly manoeuver towards the door, using it for cover as Ivan had done. He hears two more gunshots ring out, wondering if his neighbours are home, possibly dial one of Karla’s men to investigate what’s supposed to be a secluded, quiet area.

In his head, Bill counts the bullets. Sergei’s gun had eight rounds, and Bill’s sure those ran out a while ago, unless Sergei carried ammunition in his pockets. The other man—well, Bill doesn’t know, but to hit both Ivan and Sergei from the trees—

Outside, he hears a muffled shout, then a grunt, then flesh hitting flesh.

Both must have ditched their weapons, useless without their bullets, so Bill finds it safe to peer around the door, careful not to allow the stranger outside to get a clear glimpse of his face.

Outside, there’s Sergei, punches flying fast and furious and useless, missing and only hitting air—or being simply swept aside by deft, familiar hands.

Bill’s throat catches when he sees the familiar hunched back underneath a lumpy brown coat, the broad shoulders straining, thinning hair matted down with sweat. Jim’s knee hits Sergei straight in the gut, and he goes down, wheezing, and quickly, Jim’s punch on the side of Sergei’s head sends the man stumbling, arms waving ever so slightly to catch himself.

Jim has always been more comfortable with the physical aspect of the trade, and that remains true for him now, even when the body dealing out such brutal punches and kicks is no longer as graceful as it once was. Still, there is never any doubt of the outcome.

The snap of Sergei’s neck is quite clear against the chill morning.

Bill’s not sure when he left the cover of the house or when he stepped outside. Already, it feels colder than it did this morning by the lake. The snow is churned up around Jim’s feet, splattered red with blood. He lets the poker sag downward, the point drawing an arc in the air before he lets go of it completely.

Jim coughs once, a harsh, racking sound that disturbs the day more than the gunshots. “Were they yours?”

“In theory,” Bill says. He’s surprised by how much it hurts to talk.

“Lucky for you, I decided to follow you back,” Jim says. He doesn’t seem to be hurt beyond the inevitable bruises, but it’s difficult to tell. Some of that blood on the snow might be his.

There’s an entire series of questions to be asked now, starting with _why_ Jim is here, but there is no time. “We can’t stay here,” Bill says.

Already they are a _we_.

“No, we can’t,” Jim says.

Bill nods. The pain in his arm and his ribs is beginning to take over, a groan escaping before he can rein it in check.

“How badly are you hurt?” Jim asks.

“Not badly,” Bill determinedly says, attempting to stand up straight and instantly regretting it as his ribs protest.

Jim tilts his head. He says absolutely nothing, but Bill can read his expression just fine. _Bullshit._ It used to amuse him how much of a sharp tongue Jim had, bottled-up curses spewing when he couldn’t hold them in any longer, regardless to whom he was speaking to.

But Jim never raged against Bill; he was always so steadily patient with Bill more than anyone else, almost infuriatingly so. He suspects this will— _has_ changed.

“Then, if you’re not too badly hurt, perhaps you’d like to drive?” Jim now inquires, so calmly and politely that no one who didn’t know Jim well would suspect something other than good old-fashioned English pleasantness. “As you said, we can’t stay here.”

Bill grits his teeth, pride already warring inside of him. Driving would be hell on everything except his legs, and Jim knows it—knows how his eyes are tracing the blood-stained arm of Bill’s coat and the way his left hand is currently pressing gently on the ribs, feeling for damage. He looks at Jim, eyes sharp, but Jim only stands there as if they’ve got all the time in the world to stand in an open area.

It’s the open area that makes Bill relent, an easy target for whoever will come across them. “Fine,” he manages, with a dignified tilt of his chin upwards. “ _You_ drive, then.”

There’s no question of which car to take; Bill’s has official plates and can be too easily tracked. Jim’s car must be parked out of sight, a far enough distance that no one in the house would hear the sound of the engine, or the slam of a door announcing his presence. He has the sudden urge to ask Jim if it’s an Alvis.

It’s absolute lunacy. He’s light-headed from blood loss. Except that’s not true because the bullet isn’t still in his arm. He has nothing to blame this momentary lapse of reason on. Nothing at all except Jim’s presence. Jim walking toward him with purpose. Jim who should be en route back to England right now.

“Look at me,” Jim commands.

Startled, Bill blinks, and the world comes back in focus. Jim stands close by, frowning. There is a scrape of blood on his chin; most likely it’s not his own. “You’re not all right,” he pronounces. “We need to get you out of here.”

Jim is the one who needs protecting, though. On his own Bill can come up with a story. It need only be as simple as vengeance for Karla’s warning: don’t fuck with the Hero of the Soviet Union. Jim is the one who cannot be allowed to be seen here—or worse.

“No,” Bill says. He knows he had been the one to say they should flee from this place, but that now sounds reckless. Where the hell would they go? The Iron Curtain is in place, Karla will never allow him to leave Russia, the Circus will likely kill him on sight, and forget immigrating to _America_ , of all bloody places. He has no money of his own, only the supplies his handlers bring him, and nothing of value to pawn or to bribe to get travelling documents.

And if Jim was caught with him—they’d surely recognise the agent they’d shipped back to England in not quite one piece. This time, Bill’s certain, they won’t bother sending him back. They—thanks to Bill—know that Jim is burned, know that no one will blink an eye if a Jim Prideaux, former spy and French teacher, disappeared. Neither would the Circus.

The thought of Jim in their clutches makes Bill even more resolved. Never again. “No,” he repeats, trying not to sway on his feet. “You go. Alone.”

“Bill—” Jim begins, sharp impatience in his tone.

“No!” Bill almost shouts, but just in time, stops himself. “No, go back to England, Jim. This was a mistake.”

“Tell me what part of this, of _any_ of this, was meant to happen!” Jim snaps.

Bill can only look at him. _All of it,_ he wants to say. He was always meant to find his way here, to live out the rest of his life in his adopted country. It was supposed to happen under better circumstances, it’s true, and at a time of Karla’s choosing, but it _did_ happen.

What wasn’t supposed to happen was how empty it all feels. His victory over the Circus was always hollow, and feels more so with every passing day. Smiley had been fond of saying that both sides were similar, more alike than either one wanted to admit. Bill had always scoffed at that, saying loudly that England would prevail or whatever the phrase of the day was, while privately believing the complete opposite.

He’s had plenty of time to think about it, though. Enough that he wonders if maybe old Smiley hadn’t got it right after all.

“What do you want me to say?” he says to Jim.

Jim swears violently. His right shoulder jerks upward, then settles back—as far as it can, that is. “Fine,” he says. “At least help me get this one out of sight.” He gestures to Sergei’s body.

Bill’s eyes narrow. He knows exactly what Jim is doing. Even then, there appears to be an element of pettiness here, something Bill wouldn’t have expected of Jim, asking him to drag a body with his injured ribs and arm.  

He knows that regardless what happens next, he’s going to have to answer for Ivan and Sergei. Even if he concocts a story, something that pins the blame on some mysterious intruder trying to assassinate the Hero of the Soviet Union, he knows he’ll be watched more than ever, possibly under better guards he won’t get lucky enough to escape next time.

The house is bugged, too, of course. If anyone gets their hands on them, they’ll hear that Bill lost his minders, then a boot hitting flesh, a gunshot, his cry of pain, Ivan and Sergei’s taunts. He’ll have to make the scene believable.

But either way, it doesn’t look good for him—two of his guards dead soon after he’d ditched them, even for the excuse of painting. Karla will certainly put the dots together, and there will be a quiet death where, eventually, everyone will forget about him. They’ll likely think he keeled over from all the vodka, a poor and pathetic end for the Hero of the Soviet Union.

Bill looks back at the house, mind already working. Do they have time to gather supplies or find all the bugs?

First things first. He gestures with his chin to Sergei’s body. “Drag him inside.” They can layer fresh snow over the blood if there's time. At least getting the body out of plain sight will help.

Jim nods and walks up to the body. Bill does the same; he has every intention of bending down to grasp Sergei’s arm. But as soon as he leans over, pain stabs his ribs so sharply he freezes, his breath catching on a loud gasp.

“Enough,” Jim says. He sounds tired, but oddly satisfied. As though he only wanted to see Bill make an effort. “I'll handle this. My car is half a mile away. We need to get to it before they do.”

Bill knows what that means. A rapid walk through the snow and cold, with only what they can carry. Which in his case isn't much. He'll be lucky just to make it that far without his injuries slowing them down.

“All right,” he says.

Bill trudges through the snow, walking as quickly as he dares. His mind is tallying up the things in his dacha: the remains of his meals, the mostly-empty bag of flour, some bandages and antiseptic, blankets, warm clothes, a few toiletries. There’s the gun from the glove compartment of his car, too, and he’ll need to get more ammunition.

Briefly, he thinks of his art supplies, then just as quickly, mentally discards them with a pang of regret. No, they’re not necessary, and trying to jam a canvas into Jim’s car is asking too much. He’ll miss having something to do with his hands, but Sergei and Ivan were right: he won’t be painting for a long time.

He walks through the doorway, the door itself still standing wide open. Some snow has blown onto the floorboards, and there’s a strong smell of vodka. Bill makes note of the shattered bottle, then the matches above the fireplace before he sets off.

In a beat-up bag, he pushes in a few spare changes of clothes and the medical supplies. The coats and scarves he forces himself into, trying not to groan at the pressure as he raises his arms. This way, the load will be less burdensome, even if he ends up looking like an old Russian grandmother swathed in layers of fabric.

He takes one more look around his room, something that never compared to the one back in England, with its thick cotton quilts and raised bed over one of his father’s antique carpets. This is the last time he’ll ever see the dacha, and that’s all right with him. It never felt quite like home.

Without thinking, he snatches a notebook and its accompanying pencil off the nightstand and tucks it into the inside pocket of one of his coats.     

By then, his arm is throbbing badly, and his sleeve is soaked in blood. He knows he should stop and at least examine the wound, but time is the enemy now, more than mortal men like Karla or George Smiley could ever be.  Against this enemy there is no way to fight back. They can only run.

He walks one last time for the door. On the way he steps over Ivan’s body; he doesn't even glance down as he shuts the door behind him.

Outside, Jim is waiting. There is no sign of Sergei, and the bloody snow has been covered up. The sky is low enough to touch, a queer light hanging on the horizon. There will be more snow before the day is out.

“We need to go,” Jim says.

Again Bill marvels over that simple word. _We_. Jim could have—should have—left him to his fate. No one would have blamed him for it, not even Bill himself.

But Jim stayed.

“ _Can_ you?” Jim asks.

Bill is not fooled. Jim doesn't really care about his well-being. It's a practical question only, concerns about speed and distance and how far they must get to evade capture. All the old variables, the familiar problems, the way it used to be when they were young and in the field together and possibly even in love.

“Of course I can,” Bill says. He starts walking.

A hand tugs at the bag hoisted over his left shoulder, and Bill tugs back, gritting his teeth when the movement disturbs his ribs. “I can surely manage this, Jim,” he snaps. “Why don’t you get the gun from the glove compartment instead? You can shoot me if I slow us down.”

Jim opens his mouth, then closes it. His eyes are as cold as any Russian winter. “First, we’re getting out of here alive. Then, we’ll talk about it.”

Turning on his heel, Jim stalks towards Bill’s car, opening the door with such a vicious yank that Bill wouldn’t be surprised to see the handle fly off. He bends over to open the glove compartment, closing his fingers around the gun before reaching in with his other hand to snatch the box filled with bullets and shoving it into his coat pocket.

With a hard slam to the door, Jim joins Bill, face still tight with fury. Bill doesn’t look at him, his own gaze focused straight ahead. If Jim’s walking a little faster than normal, Bill doesn’t comment on it, no matter how much of a strain it puts on his ribs, keeping the moans pressed deep inside.

Muttering under his breath, Jim points to somewhere beyond the trees. “That way,” he says roughly. “Dropped my rifle close by. We should need that.”

Bill only nods.

“There’s more medical supplies where I’m staying,” Jim continues, glancing at Bill’s coat-encased arm. “Bandage it in the car, and we’ll see to it when we get back.”

Bill nods again, and Jim turns away. His gloved fingers are still tight around the gun, but he makes no move to point it at Bill, no matter how violently his swearing is surely brewing in his head.

They walk in silence, Jim slightly in the lead. Already the bag on Bill’s shoulder is growing heavy, an unwelcome reminder that he is not a young man anymore, that he spent too many years behind a desk. That he's wounded.

Spies get burned all the time. By the enemy, if they're lucky. By their own organisation, if they're not. Every one of them has stories about that time they were forced to go on the run with nothing but the clothes on their backs. The good ones, the ones who survive to hold their hands out to the fire again, can even make the stories sound interesting. Peter Guillam in particular could always be relied on for the tale of how he and Tiny Toby barely escaped Berne.

Being injured changes everything. People get left behind when they can't keep up, and rightfully so. Mistakes are made. It's much harder to get away clean when the enemy can smell the blood trail.

Perhaps this is Jim’s idea of revenge. Or atonement. He was never a cruel man, but then he was never betrayed by his lover and tortured, either.

Bill refuses to admit to his weakness. He keeps the pace as best he can, grateful for his boots that give him traction in the snow. His arm throbs in time with his heartbeat. Pain stabs his side with every step. The bag slung over his shoulder seems heavier with each passing minute.

How long to walk half a mile? They should have been there by now. Unless Jim miscalculated. But that doesn't seem likely. He must be walking slower than he thought.

But at least now they’ve reached the trees. Jim bends down to snatch up a rifle, tossed aside in the heat of the battle, then looks at the handgun clenched tightly in his fist. Bill stops, waiting, left hand preoccupied with keeping the bag from sliding off his shoulder and right hand dangling uselessly at his side. A branch pokes him in his left side, pressing against him like the butt of a gun.

“Here,” Jim says, then flips the handgun before holding it out to Bill, handle pointed at him.

Bill wordlessly takes it, and Jim seems to tense before Bill puts it carefully in his waistband. He looks up at Jim, and something—a challenge, an understanding, or a _yes?_ —passes between them. They are both very much capable of pulling a trigger. Close as they are, they won’t miss.

But Bill has no reason to harm Jim, and while Jim has every reason, he won’t. Otherwise, he would have done so as soon as Bill set foot near that lake.

Jim turns away and begins walking again. “Won’t be long now,” he says, pushing back a few branches long enough for Bill to follow without being prodded in the side or arm. Bill gratefully pushes on, trying not to breathe too heavily, keeping his eyes peeled for a flash of metal or a tyre.

At last they reach an area where the branches are thick enough to hide a car, but not so much that they prevent driving away quickly. If Bill didn’t have any injuries, he’d run the rest of the way to toss his belongings in the car and get the hell out of here. But for now, he’s just looking forward to sitting down for a few minutes.

“Where are you staying?” He’s taking a risk even asking the question, but sooner or later one of them has to speak. He’s appalled by how winded he sounds, how even a simple question exacerbates the pain in his ribs and makes him wish he hadn’t spoken.

“I know a place,” Jim says. He’s clearly withholding his trust. He points to a place just off to the right. “Ah. There’s the car.”

To the casual observer, the undergrowth looks completely natural. To someone who’s been in the trade as long as Bill has, the shape of the car hidden beneath the tree limbs is unmistakable.

Jim hesitates, then holds out the rifle.

Bill takes it, and now he has both their weapons. Their eyes meet, and again, he has that sense of challenge, of an unspoken test.

It’s a test he has every intention of passing. He practically throws the bag he’s been carrying to the ground at Jim’s feet, sighing gratefully as the pressure on his shoulder lessens considerably.  In stony silence he marches back the way they came, rifle at the ready. Injured as he is, he won’t be able to provide complete cover for Jim, but then again, that’s not what this is about.

Behind him he hears branches and undergrowth being pulled aside and tossed to the snowy ground. The wind darts through the trees; it’s definitely colder out than it was this morning. Stretching away from him, their trail leads through the forest, so obvious a child could follow it. There’s enough of the field agent in him still for his stomach to knot at the sight.

“Ready,” Jim calls. A car door slams.

Bill still keeps his eyes roving at the edge of the forest, rifle raised. He won't be of much use, but he can't think of that. All he has to do is pull the trigger. There's the kickback, of course, but dammed if he will allow them both to die in this place.

“Bill?” Jim calls again. His voice has uncertainty lingering below the surface.

“I'm coming,” he reassures, stepping away. He puts the safety back on the rifle, but keeps his hand on his pistol for the walk back. Even if he didn’t have far to go, the trail leading to the car is unmistakable. Broken branches, clear boot treads, spots of blood—foolish, foolish, foolish.

When Bill reaches the car, Jim has already opened the boot and stowed his belongings inside. He leans in so he can dig through the bag, then snatches the roll of bandages with his left hand.

He looks at Jim, who's getting into the driver’s seat without a glance back, and slams the top down and quickly puts the rifle into the back seat before following suit.

There's the clumsy buckling of his seat belt, fighting with the strap and the bloody mechanism that keeps popping out of place. The metal latch refuses to go in all the way, and Bill curses, flipping it to the other side with his left hand, having to turn his wrist awkwardly to tug in a way that won't pull on his ribs.

Bill’s pride pricks again; how could he have been reduced to this?

Jim drives away without a word. He will have memorised the streets, know his route in the dark, in pouring rain. He checks the rearview mirror often, but doesn’t seem overly stressed. The roads are clear of snow, another luxury that comes from living in this part of Moscow, and traffic is light.

The car’s heater doesn’t work. Not a surprise given that it’s Soviet-made. Bill tips his head back against the seat, grateful for his coats, and tries to breathe shallowly.

“Do you have a check-in?” Jim asks.

The question is so ludicrous Bill actually laughs. “What do you think this is?” he says. “Do you think Karla is still my handler?”

“Isn’t he?” Jim says mildly.

The words sting. In point of fact, Karla has nothing to do with him anymore. He’s served his purpose, fulfilled his duty. He’s here now, alive and living among the Moscow elite only because he might still be of use at some vague point in the future if something inexplicable occurs at the Circus that requires an explanation. No, Karla is not his handler anymore. Karla is not even his gaoler. For that, Karla would have to think about him.

“I’m a free man,” he says. He’s tired, he’s angry and in pain—and he knows damn well how pathetic he sounds.

Jim doesn’t reply, and Bill now occupies himself with trying to get his right arm out of all the coat sleeves, stifling groans whenever his ribs are disturbed or when the wound rubs painfully against the fabric. Layer by layer, Bill peels them off, then pushes up the sleeves of his shirt, leaving his left arm covered, and reaches for the roll of bandages.

He learned about this long before the Circus, tightly winding them up towards the heart. It’s clumsier with his left hand, but he manages, biting down hard in concentration and in pain, not daring to look too closely at it. There’s a lot of blood and he has no way of cleaning it off just now. The bullet isn’t in his flesh, though, so that’s a blessing, as well as the fact he can still move his arm and flex his hands.

Jim keeps his eyes on the road, and Bill remembers when they were on their first mission together. It had seemed like such a dream, the perfect scenario; no one had got hurt, no plans were ever fucked to hell, and no covers were blown. They’d celebrated with a bottle of whisky and some smokes and a victory fuck underneath the thin blankets.

They used to be legendary back then. If only—

If only what? Karla hadn’t approached him? If only England hadn’t fucking fell flat on its arse during the Suez incident? If only Jim weren’t such a perfect, loyal Englishman? He’d allowed himself to entertain that fantasy very briefly: two moles running circles around the Circus, golden boys again, just as he’d imagined when he wrote that letter to a very different organisation.

_He is my other half, and between us, we’d make one marvellous man._

“Still bleeding?” Jim asks.

“No,” Bill says. He’ll have to toss at least one of the coats in the rubbish, though.

“Good,” Jim says. He sounds so grim, Bill fleetingly entertains the thought of Jim taking him not to a safe house, but to a place like the one the Soviets took him after Brno, when their only care for his physical well-being was to get him healed up enough to withstand interrogation.

He doesn’t think Jim would do that to him. But then, he doesn’t really know Jim anymore, does he?

They drive on. Their breath frosts the air before them. With his coats off on one side, Bill shivers in the cold.  Jim checks the rearview mirror compulsively, makes random turns, and clenches his jaw. Bill curls his fingers into a fist and grimaces at the pain, and wonders if he’ll ever paint again.

Away from the city, the roads deteriorate. Snow and slush covers the surface, and the car skids more than once. Jim’s grip on the wheel is tight. He glances in the mirror more often, then makes such a sudden turn onto a narrow lane that Bill is flung into the door hard enough to wring a short cry from him. “Christ, watch it!”

Jim says nothing, his expression dark.

“Shit,” Bill mutters. He eases his left hand across his chest, feeling gingerly at his bandaged arm. He can’t see any blood seeping through the fabric, though he’s not so sure his ribs haven’t been snapped in half by Jim’s vicious stunt.

“Everything all right?” Jim asks, tone bordering on sarcastic.

“Oh, yes,” Bill says, equally sarcastic, “nothing jostled too much.”

“Good,” Jim says, then checks the mirror again. His hands are clenched so tightly on the steering wheel that they’ll be stiff when he gets his fingers straightened again. Perhaps Bill would have to pry them off the steering wheel. His eyes dart forwards, foot pressing harder on the pedal.

Bill glances back, too. Empty roads stretch out behind them, with no cars or people in sight. He wonders if anyone is at his house now, turning over Ivan and searching through all the rooms to see what he took, finding Sergei’s corpse in one of them. Part of his mind, the spy’s endgame of survival, is spinning a story: he was captured by an old colleague, angered at his betrayal of the Circus and who killed his bodyguards. He forced Bill to pack only what he needed, held him at gunpoint, and made him get in the car—

No, no. It is very unlikely anyone who catches up with them will be interested or even take the time to talk before shooting. And the bugs in his house will tell their own story; there was no coercion involved. Besides, if anyone believed him, Bill knows what would happen to Jim—a bullet in his head or his heart, nothing that will allow him to live this time.

What exactly will happen to _him_ , the Hero of the Soviet Union, is something Bill prefers not to think about. He knows he wouldn't survive even a year in a Siberian gulag. But Karla would remind them that he could still be of use. They would want to keep his sanity at least partially intact. No, his jail might actually be comfortable. But it would still be a jail. And there would be no escaping that one.

“Not far now,” Jim mutters with another glance in the rearview mirror. They’ve slowed down considerably, mostly because the road is little more than an icy, rutted track. The land is open, only a few trees dotting the snow. There is not a soul around, neither man nor beast.

Bill spots the safehouse not long after that. He stares in horror as they approach, unable to believe this is where Jim has brought him. The wooden shack has a curious slumped look, as though the roof has partially melted. A sagging fence encircles the left side. There is a narrow chimney, but no smoke rising from it. “You must be joking.”

Already he can see half a dozen places to cache weapons, and there will probably be even more inside. There is a shed behind the shack where the car can be hidden. The lack of tree cover makes it obvious that no one will be able to approach without being heard or seen. But that same lack of cover means it’s also painfully exposed, and every instinct Bill has tells him this is a very bad idea.

But Jim has been staying here for weeks, living in this country where he would be shot on sight by anyone who recognised him for who he really is. This has been his shelter while he lurked on the edges of Bill’s life, watching unseen, working his way up to delivering messages and leaving signals. And if Jim has declared it safe, then it must be.

Jim drives up to the shed. “Stay here,” he orders. He gets out and heads for the house. Checking it out, no doubt, making sure all the signals he left are intact and undisturbed.

The hell with that. Bill pops the boot, climbs awkwardly out of the car, and hauls the bag out. It hurts a lot more than he expects. He’s stiffening up, his body unused to the rigours of fieldwork anymore.

And what about Jim? What wounds is he hiding, what pain does he bear from the fight with Sergei? He won’t want to let on about any of it, always so secretive when it comes to such things, but Bill won’t have it. If they are truly doing this—and it seems they are—then the time has come for them to stop keeping secrets.

Or at least some of them.

Jim comes back, giving Bill a short nod. It's safe—safe as a hidden house in the Soviet Union could be.  
  
Bill follows, each step heavier and heavier. His breaths are shallow now, barely making puffs in front of him. The sky above them is darkening, and he already knows from the still crispness of the air that it will snow tonight. He hopes it's warmer inside.  
  
What Jim leads him to, though, is a three-room house at best with nothing more than a short, fat stove to heat up the room. The fire is out, and Jim curses, immediately reaching for the logs nestled in a nearby grate. In better circumstances, Bill would offer to help, but Jim doesn't seem to need him anyway, tossing in logs with ease and industriously working to coax up a small blaze from kindling and matchsticks.  
  
"Tea?" Jim asks, slamming the door and turning towards Bill, wiping his hands on his trousers.  
  
"Yes, please." Anything hot to drink will be a comfort, even if the tea here is incredibly weak. He looks around for a place to sit down, but there's only a very small, rickety kitchen table and two stools, certainly no couch or armchairs. And he's not sitting and hauling himself up from the cold floor, either.  
  
"Sit over there." Jim gestures to his right, and Bill thanks him with a short nod before plodding his way down the short hall, pushing the door open.  
  
It's smaller, more utilitarian than Jim's old flat used to be. The only piece of furniture is a bed, close to the ground. The blankets are thin, and the sheets have a small hole in one of the corners. A coat is bundled up on a pillow.  
  
This is Jim's room, he realises.

It’s very cold in here; even with the heat from the stove, the bedroom is probably never truly warm. Jim has been sleeping here night after night, shivering in the cold, maybe wondering if this is the night they find him and drag him out in the snow to be shot.

He can hear Jim moving around in the living room/kitchen area. The clatter of a teakettle being set on the stove. Footsteps on the bare wooden floor. Bill shivers and clenches his jaw against a groan of pain as the movement jars his aching ribs.

He’s still standing there when Jim walks up carrying a steaming mug. “Here.”

Bill takes it gratefully. The heat warms his hands, which feel frozen in spite of his gloves. “You realise we have nowhere to go,” he says.

“I’m aware,” Jim says. He stands in the doorway, reluctant to come too far into the room. “Though, I’m not sure what you want me to do about it.”

“We can’t bloody well stay here,” Bill snaps.

Jim doesn’t respond. He just stands there, an inscrutable expression on his face. Bill waits for him to speak, to defend his decision to go on the run with the man who betrayed him to the enemy, and at last realises Jim isn’t going to say anything.

Chagrined, he raises the mug and drinks. The tea is awful, just as he knew it would be.

“It’s not like…” Jim begins, but abruptly stops, shaking his head.

“What?” Bill demands, lowering the mug. He's impatient and tired and in pain and everything’s more uncertain than it was a few hours ago.

“It’s not like I planned for this!” Jim snaps. He clenches his fists at his sides, looking as if he very much want to take a swing. At what, Bill doesn’t know—but he’s sure he’s made it onto the list. “It’s not like...I don’t…”

Bill waits, as Jim fumes in silence, as if trying to sort all of his thoughts into a coherent sentence. He half expects Jim to put a hand to his chin, like he used to do at Oxford or occasionally at his desk in the Circus, but Jim’s hands, the ones that changed from swinging cricket bats and helping him put up canvases for poorly-attended art shows to pulling triggers and snapping necks, stay balled at his sides. Jim’s silence has always been more condemning than anything he usually could say, but now, he’s got in a few good blows today. They’re both wounded in more ways than one, standing in front of each other in this cold, decrepit house in Russia.

Jim finally speaks, voice low enough that Bill has to crane his neck to hear: “I put it all together when Smiley came to see me. I knew where you would be.”

“Smiley came to see you?” Bill asks, frowning. He knows that Smiley had been the one to unmask him, just as Karla feared, but never thought too much about how he did it. There was always evidence if one knew where to look and who to talk to, and who else could do it but George Smiley, even if forced into retirement? He does remember Smiley asking him about whether Jim told him where he was going before Testify, but his mind had been more on what was going to happen to him, how to spin this to Karla, where to tie up loose ends.

“Yes, at my school,” Jim says, and instantly, Bill sees a wall go up behind his eyes. “I...I told him about Testify, and when he left, I kept thinking and thinking and—I realised, Bill. I knew all along. This just confirmed it.” His tone is now clipped, but has gone even lower, yet Bill doesn’t want to step any closer. “Then, I called out of classes and waited at Sarratt.”

This is unexpected. He’s not sure what to think now that he knows Jim was there at the Nursery, watching him from afar. Doing what, exactly? Plotting revenge? Working up the courage to present himself at the gate and demand to see the man responsible for the ruin his life had become?

“I wasn’t there very long,” Bill says. “Karla was insistent on making the trade as soon as possible.”

Jim just nods.

Bill glances down at his tea, but he’s no longer interested in it. “And why did you come here? You certainly planned _that_.”

Jim grimaces. “Damned if I know.” He takes a deep breath and finally looks up. “Finish that,” he says with a curt gesture. “And take those damn coats off. I need to tend to that arm.”

“What about you?” Bill asks. “Are you hurt?”

Jim shakes his head. “I’m fine.”

He may or may not be, but it’s the only answer he’s going to give, that much is clear.

Bill glances around. There’s nowhere to set the mug he’s holding except for the floor, and there’s no way he’s leaning over to manage that. Instead he thrusts it at Jim, forcing him to take it or let it fall to the floor and shatter. He’s angry again, tired of being at the mercy of everyone around him. Tired too of Jim Prideaux and his enigmatic games.

_Why did you come here? Why did you follow me back home? And for God’s sake, why did you save me?_

He peels off his coats, scarves, and gloves, gritting his teeth as his arm and ribs protest vehemently. Jim’s bed is too low to the ground for him to sit with any defiance, let alone dignity, but he manages as best he can.

Jim places the mug down on the floor with a short glare, almost kneeling, and Bill looks away, staring at nothing in particular. He feels the bed dip down beside him, Jim so close now that Bill can smell the old leather of Jim’s coat. He doesn’t dare to look, not even as he wordlessly holds out his arm. He doesn’t know whether the blood scrape across Jim’s face is still there, if he’ll see new bruises and scars.

Jim lightly prods at the bandage, then carefully begins to unravel it with deft, careful hands. The cotton falls away, and Jim drops it on the bed, where it falls into a swirl and lays there like a ribbon. It’s bloodstained, bright red fading to that rust they’re both familiar with.

“The bullet didn’t go in,” Jim says shortly. “But you’ll need stitches.”

Bill nods. It’s just as he thought: a flesh wound. Nothing permanently damaging—hopefully—but it will definitely leave a scar. “I don’t have any in the bag,” he says. “Only antiseptic and bandages.”

“I have a kit in the bathroom,” Jim replies, then stands up. Before Bill can protest, he rummages through his bag and tosses the roll of bandages at him, which falls neatly in his lap. He then goes to the door, looking back long enough to say, rather shortly, “Stay here.”

Bill is very tempted to roll his eyes. Where would he go? But all the same, he sits there, pressing a bit of cotton to his wound and hoping Jim will be decent enough to get him drunk before starting. It’s never pleasant having a needle poke and tug at the edges of an open wound, and it’s been so long since he’s experienced it. Paperwork and painting, after all, rarely led to such grisly accidents.

In almost no time, Jim comes back, holding a plastic box with a simple latch. He sets it on the bed before opening it; inside are a jumble of bandages, a few dull metal tools, vials with various coloured liquids, plasters, a small cloth package, and another plastic box.

“Did you wash your hands?” Bill asks, mostly to be difficult, even though he knows very well he shouldn’t delay this much longer.

Jim only gives him a look.  

It’s impossible not to stare in return, drink in every detail of the face he once knew as well as his own. He hasn’t been this physically close to Jim since, well, he can’t remember when. Jim is definitely thinner than he remembers, and more of his scalp is visible. The twist in his back is painfully obvious, his right shoulder higher than the left. He smells of blood and cold and leather.

Uncaring of Bill’s study, or else just pretending to be, Jim holds one of the cloths to the bottle of antiseptic and pours out a generous amount. “This will hurt,” he warns.

Bill looks away. It may have been years since he was in this situation, but he knows exactly what to expect.

So the first touch of Jim’s hand on his bare shoulder, strangely gentle, takes him completely by surprise. In spite of himself, he flinches back, his breath hissing between his teeth as pain stabs his ribs.

Jim ignores this, too. “Hold still.” He keeps that hand on Bill’s shoulder, bracing, supporting.

The antiseptic burns like fire, but Bill scarcely notices it beside the heat of Jim’s touch.

They haven’t touched in such a long time. The most they risked at the Circus, back when there was something to risk, was a casual pat of a shoulder. In private, it was almost always in the dark, lights turned off, curtains pulled over the windows, sometimes blankets tugged over their bodies, using touch and smell and sounds to guide them. They were bolder at Oxford, more free with touches, but still, there was always a hint of caution within every finger or knuckle against bare skin.

Jim now bends over the wound, lightly touching the edges and making sure the area’s completely clean. He says nothing as he reaches for the curved needle and the thick, black thread, and Bill looks away just as the metal tip pokes into his flesh almost gently. It’s silly to be squeamish over such a small thing, and he’s half-tempted to suck it up and watch Jim do the whole procedure.

But he doesn’t, only gritting his teeth when the needle does go in, then tugs, thread following and burrowing its way through his skin. Bill wishes—and it probably won’t be for the last time—that Jim gave him something to drink before starting, but it’s almost too late now.

The thread draws tighter, and Bill can feel both sides of the skin lifting as Jim pulls away, tying both ends of the thread into a knot, then another, then another.

“That’s just the first,” Jim says, sounding like his old self for a moment—patient, coaxing.  

“For fuck’s sake,” Bill mutters, still not looking at his arm, “just get on with it.”

Jim makes a small noise at the back of his throat, almost like laughter, and Bill’s just going to tell Jim to fuck off when the needle stabs at his flesh again.

“Shit,” Bill hisses, closing his eyes. “Forgot how…”

“How much it hurts?” Jim finishes.

Bill doesn’t answer. Maybe it’s the tone, the pain, the tiredness, or whatever else, but suddenly, he feels on the defensive, stiffening up despite the pain in his ribs.

“Is this your idea of revenge?” he snaps. “Do you—”

“If I wanted revenge,” Jim says, “you would be dead right now in the snow.” He knots another stitch.

He sounds scarily remote just then, which only fuels Bill’s anger. “Then what is this?” He gestures with his left arm. “Why did you follow me home? What are you even doing here?”

Jim pulls another stitch through, his focus apparently only on what his hands are doing. But the truth is in the set of his jaw, and the way his entire body tightens up with tension. As close as they are sitting to each other, it’s impossible to miss.

“Answer me, would you?” He can feel the years unraveling, the cold chill of the room slipping into starry nights in Austria. Himself demanding to know where Jim was all day— _answer me!_ —threatened more by that absence than the idea of the mission failing.

Even then he had been living a double life, keeping secrets.

Jim knots another stitch, but Bill hardly feels it anymore. “That should do it,” he says. He puts the needle and thread back where they belong in the first aid kit. His hands are steady. The blood on his chin is definitely not his own.

“I would do it again, you know,” Bill declares. He speaks overly loud, needing to make his point. He’s tempting fate, but it has to be said. He still believes in the East, in Karla, in what he did.

Jim looks squarely at him before reaching for one of the rolls of bandages in the kit and beginning to wrap his arm. “I know you would.”

Bill doesn't quite know how to answer this. He expected vehement denial or violent anger, but all he hears is resigned weariness, as if Jim has turned this over and over in his head, looking at it through every angle before deciding this was all inevitable.

Hell, he had thought about it, especially while giving Karla only select gifts of intelligence before that fucking Suez incident revealed just how weak the West was. Bill had been committed, yes, but not quite the firebrand that snatched onto Soviet citizenship and the direct destruction of the Circus.

But it was an eventuality. He always wanted to be at the forefront of the strongest contender, to be part of that steady world power, to lead what he thought would be Britain into a new age. The war had had its losses, yes, but he believed in the glory and power of the West, what they could accomplish. They beat back the Nazis, beat back the East, beat back what nearly everyone in the world preached about evil and darkness. They were the saviours, and this was their destiny.

Jim never quite saw it that way, Bill knew. Despite his talents, he had to get away from the war for a while, teach the young who would hopefully never become soldiers themselves. But Jim always wandered, searching for a purpose, and it was then Bill once again brought Jim to the attention of the Circus.

And it seemed so permanent then, he and Jim fighting side by side, bringing about glorious change. They believed in their organisation, their purpose, their country—and their country repaid them by falling into disrepair and ineffectiveness.

Betrayal begets betrayal.

He looks back at Jim, knowing Jim can see everything dancing in his eyes, even when shot in the arm by people who were assigned to protect the Hero of the Soviet Union, even when in this decrepit little house that he knows is a Russian standard of living. For what seems like minutes, they stare at each other, drinking all those years between them, and Bill wonders which one of them will break first.

It's Jim who does, gaze falling to Bill’s stomach. “Your ribs.”

“Yes,” Bill says, somewhat distantly.

Jim’s right hand comes forward, fingers pressing against his clothed stomach. Bill hisses, flinching away, but Jim’s hand roves, prodding in different areas, sometimes with his fingertips and sometimes with his palm. For a moment, Jim pauses, hand still splayed in the centre of Bill’s stomach. “You’re going to have to take this off,” he says quietly.

Bill does not move. He’s known that for some time, he realises, though he didn’t want to admit it to himself until he had no other choice. He’s not sure he can. It’s one thing to let Jim tend the bullet wound in his arm. But this? This means literally baring half of himself naked before Jim’s gaze. This means letting Jim touch him in places that haven’t been touched in too long to count.

He can’t do it.

“It’s fine,” he says. “They’re just cracked, not broken. And it’s too bloody cold in here. I’m not taking my shirt off.” He knows it’s a fake excuse. Worse, knows that _Jim_ knows it’s fake. But at least it sounds genuine, a cover story plausible enough to fall back on.

Still the spy, even after all this time.

“All right,” Jim says. “You know best.” His hand lingers a moment longer than strictly necessary, a touch Bill can feel through the thick shirt, a heat that warms him in a way nothing else could.

He thinks he could be warm in Russia if Jim were to stay here.

Of course he knows that is impossible. Jim is a wanted man, and haunted by the memory of what happened to him here. He would never stay. And he is a man of the West, of England. He could never belong here.

Jim pulls his hand away and stands up. “I’m going to check the perimeter. Try to rest.” Without a backward glance, he walks out.

Bill remains where he is, his arm aching where the new stitches hold him together. He hears the front door open and close; a few seconds later, Jim passes by the one window, his figure dark and bleary in the imperfect glass. He will have laid traps and tripwires around the house, Bill knows. And various small tells near the road, where a person might stop and lay low while watching the house: an array of rocks or tree branches that look natural enough an unwary person would disturb them in passing. If anyone has been here, if anyone has followed them to this crude shelter, Jim will know instantly.

And then what? They certainly can’t stay here, but the question of where they go from here is one Bill would prefer not to answer until later. But he knows that if Jim returns in a rush and says they have to go _now_ , he will do it, and without hesitation.

Finally, Bill stands up, walking over to the window to look outside. Jim’s slipping soundlessly around the house, right hand tucked out of sight, likely either holding or resting on a gun’s handle. He looks around, skimming the trees, and glances down at his feet once or twice. Occasionally, he’ll brush over his tracks or glance behind him. Despite the darkness falling, Jim has not taken a torch or a lamp, the bright light a clear signal to outsiders that someone is here, squatting in this abandoned house.

If someone finds them, Bill will not be able to help as much as he’d like. He’s newly stitched, ribs not set, and weaponless—but damned if he doesn’t fight to survive, just as he’s always done.

Just as this comes to mind, Jim turns around, and Bill freezes, cursing his foolishness for standing so blatantly in plain sight. But Jim’s eyes do not meet his, only looking towards the house, a pane of glass, fogged by Bill’s breath, in between them.

Jim turns away, continuing his walk, and Bill finds himself letting out a long, slow breath.

He bends down as slowly and as carefully as he can to retrieve the mug on the floor, then shuffles backwards towards the bed. The tea was terrible when it was hot, and it’s worse when it’s cold—almost undrinkable, bitter and with remnants of soggy bits of leaves at the bottom. But Bill downs it anyway. It’s something to fill his stomach and might keep him awake. He doesn’t plan on falling asleep.

He wonders if Jim will steel himself to lay in the bed with him. They’ve done it enough times at Oxford, curled together with the door firmly shut, and sparingly on missions. For the sake of covers, they rented separate rooms, often far enough away from each other to not arouse suspicion but close enough that should anything happen, the other would be able to come quickly to their aid.

Even after all these years, Bill still thinks he can remember the shape of Jim’s body around him, long limbs thrown over the side of bed or over his stomach, mouth slightly open in a snore. He’d thought about getting out of bed and pulling out a pencil and paper during their lie-ins, but never had been able to bring himself to move, not even for that perfect sketch.

But most likely, Jim will simply make up a pile of blankets on the floor, possibly close to the stove, and Bill will pass through the night shivering underneath coats and blankets.

He doesn’t like being unarmed, likes even less the idea that he will need to defend himself. He eyes the pile of coats on the bed, but just the idea of putting them all on again exhausts him. He settles for choosing the thickest, warmest one, wincing as the stitches pull in his arm. He waits a bit, dreading to feel the telltale seep of blood, but none comes; the stitches held. He should have expected no less from Jim’s handiwork.

He then walks slowly from the bedroom, careful to keep his stride slow and even so he doesn’t jostle his ribs, and into the main room.

It’s warmer in here now, the stove doing its work, although it’s still too cold for his liking. The rifle Jim brought with them is leaning against the wall near the front door. Bill takes it, feeling better the moment his hand closes about the stock. His shooting scores at the Nursery were never exemplary, but it’s enough just to have a weapon once more.

He returns to the bedroom, carrying the rifle with the barrel aimed at the ceiling, propped against his left shoulder. He checks the view out the window but there is nothing to see but the rapidly dwindling daylight.

The bed is uncomfortable; he hadn’t noticed before, being too preoccupied with his hurts, and more importantly, Jim sitting so close. He works his boots off, swearing loudly when he has to lean down, using his right hand as sparingly as possible. With that task done, he shifts back on the bed so he can lean against the wall, the thin pillow at his back. He pulls the covers up over his legs, then reaches for the extra coats he brought with him. The bloodstained one gets tossed to the floor, to be used later only if necessary. The others he drapes across his chest, grateful for their warmth. Foolishly he sets the one that was already here, the one Jim must having been using all this time as a makeshift blanket, on top of the pile. He can’t smell Jim on it, but for some reason it pleases him anyway to have it so near.

He rests the rifle across his lap and settles himself in for what will surely be a long, unpleasant night.

Outside, night falls swiftly, darkening the little shack, too. It’s very quiet, with not even the creak of old plumbing to break the stillness. It could be a safe house in East Berlin, Stockholm, Shanghai. He wonders where Jim is and what he’s doing. Why Jim prioritised his well-being above the defenses that are the only things keeping them safe right now.

Is it possible that even after everything, Jim still—

The front door opens. Bill sits up in a rush, aiming the rifle at the doorway, ready for anyone and anything.

Heavy footsteps approach. Bill eases the safety off and lays his finger along the trigger.

A shadowed form appears in the doorway, then pauses. “It’s just me,” Jim says.

Bill slumps back, lowering the rifle and putting the safety back on. “I don’t suppose you have a lantern or anything.”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Jim says. “But I don’t use it in here.” He gestures to the window.

Thinking of him sitting here in the cold and dark night after night, working out ways to send his cryptic messages to the man who got him shot in the back, is enough to make Bill wish he had never decided to  meet Jim at the lake. He could be in his own house right now, thinking of what he will have for dinner, a boring documentary on telly, his third glass of vodka for the night in his hand.

Instead he is here. With Jim.

Jim looks towards the rifle still clutched in Bill’s hands, but his gaze isn’t anything like when they were stumbling through the woods to get to his car. There’s no wariness, no hand on the pistol on his belt, nothing more than a glance, as if Bill’s holding nothing more than a mug. “Everything is secure,” he says.

“Good,” Bill replies.

Jim then nods. “It’s getting late. Are you going to go back to sleep, or do you want dinner?”

Bill shakes his head, already pushing the coats aside and swinging his legs over the edge and regretting it when the quick movement pushes at his ribs. But he manages to hold the wince in, substituting it for a smile, perhaps _too_ bright, judging by the way Jim’s brow furrows. “Dinner sounds wonderful,” he says quickly, keeping the smile on his face, even though Jim can hardly have a feast at his disposal.

Jim nods. “It’s mostly canned,” he says, matter-of-factly.

Bill doesn’t know whether Jim risked going to a grocery store or simply took from people’s homes or cars. The thought of Jim walking into the same enemy country that permanently damaged his back and career to see him, risking his life for as simple as gathering food for himself, makes Bill’s stomach twist unpleasantly in ways he does not wish to examine too closely yet.

He stands up, using the edge of bed as a crutch, pushing himself up slowly. “That’s fine,” he replies.

“You can stay here,” Jim says. “There’s no need to strain yourself.”

“I want to help,” Bill replies, already walking towards the doorway. Surely he can manage opening a can or stirring a potful of soup—watered down broth, more like.

A hand claps down on his shoulder, and Bill slowly turns his neck to see Jim looking sternly down at him, face set in a frown. “You stay here,” he insists.

“No,” Bill replies, just as stubbornly. Two can play at that game, regardless of the cold setting into this small room and the beginning gnawing pangs in his stomach.

“ _You_ need rest,” Jim snaps. “The more you rest, the faster you recover.”

“I’m hardly going to tear my stitches by simple domestic chores,” Bill says. “It’s not as if you’re going to ask me to haul logs for your stove or shovel the snow out of the driveway.”

“No,” Jim says, then, too casually: “But you can agitate those ribs, since I recall you refused to have them treated.”

“There’s nothing to be done and you know it,” he snaps. He’s never liked being coddled, and especially under these circumstances. He’s already uncomfortably in Jim’s debt; he doesn’t want to add anything to what he owes.

To prove his point, he goes into the main room. The stove glows red and welcome, the lone point of light in the shack. Uncertain where to go next, he hesitates, allowing Jim to walk past him.

Jim moves with purpose, a dark silhouette in the red light. He walks over to the _stenka_ set against the wall and takes down a few items. One by one, he covers the windows, tacking up dark squares of fabric. He returns to the shelves, there is a muffled clink, and then light finally blooms.

The lantern casts deep shadows in the small room. But the light is plenty to see by, to Bill’s relief. Not only because it means they won’t pass the night in total darkness, but because he now knows Jim hasn’t been sitting here in the dark all this time, either.

“There isn’t much,” Jim says. He gestures to the cans on one of the lower shelves of the _stenka_ . It’s a crude representation, nothing at all like the fancy ones lining the walls at Bill’s dacha, but it’s still perfectly serviceable. The _stenka_ holds rows of canned goods and bottled water, matches and candles, and a battered box of ammunition; the lower shelf contains folded sets of clothing and gloves. As always, Jim is prepared for anything.

He’s surprisingly hungry, Bill realises. It’s been a very long day, even though by the clock it’s still only early evening; dark comes early to Moscow at this time of year. “Anything is fine.” He sits gingerly on one of the stools at the rickety table, and waits.

Jim goes to the stove, reaching upwards for a box of matches as his other hand cranks a dial. In no time, the burner lights up, the small flames a bright blue, and Jim begins rifling through the cabinets to drag out a pan with spots of brown on the handle and a scorched bottom. He places it quickly on the stove, then retrieves a can with a red label, pulling the tab and dumping the contents into the pan.

For a long time, Jim works in silence, stirring the contents with a long wooden spoon, while Bill sits on his stool, rubbing his hands together. Several topics come to mind, then are swiftly banished. Small talk, even about the weather, only reminds them of the situation they are in, the years they’ve gone without seeing each other, the shadows and secrets that have surrounded them even back home.

“So,” Bill begins, falsely cheerfully, “what’s on the menu for tonight?”

“Stew,” Jim says. “Carrots, beef, tomatoes...potatoes.”

“The Russians do love their potatoes,” Bill replies, with a short laugh that’s too loud in the small room.

“Yes,” Jim says, no trace of humour in his tone. He keeps stirring. “They do.”

“And mayonnaise,” Bill continues. Fuck knows why he keeps talking, but he can’t bear to sit in silence like this. “They have an ungodly love of it.” There’s an anecdote that comes to mind about Bill coming to dine with Karla and seeing almost every dish include mayonnaise, but, for obvious reasons, is no longer quite as funny as it was back then.

Jim only continues to stir the stew, and Bill gives it up for a lost cause. Instead, he looks at the _stenka_ again, counting its contents and trying to calculate how much of those cans are enough to stall a supply run and for how long. Certainly not enough to last the weeks it would take for his ribs to fully recover—and he doubts they’re staying here for that long.

He studies the clothing neatly folded and stacked, evidence that Jim has been living here for weeks, silently watching from afar. What did he make of Bill during that time, watching him get drunk and sloppy, weaving through life? Did he understand the ploy? Or did he think it was real?

And what of England and the Circus? Do they know Jim is here? Do they have him discreetly followed? Does Smiley know Jim is there? Heaven forbid, did Smiley even _sanction_ this?

But he can think of no reason Smiley would want to send Jim here, and it does seem rather unlikely. Percy might have done it, could have been persuaded to use Jim to wrap up any loose ends, but Smiley was always far more clever and subtle.

No, for whatever reasons, Jim came on his own.

Jim grabs a bowl from a top shelf and dumps half the stew in it. It smells good, but Bill has no illusions about how it will taste. Nonetheless, he’ll eat it gladly, grateful for the warm food in his stomach if nothing else.

“Eat.” Jim sets the bowl before him, along with a bottle of water. Such a simple thing, but it reminds Bill poignantly of those days when he painted from sunrise to sundown, immersed in his art, convinced it would take him places. Jim would bring him food then with the same terse command to eat, and sometimes he would even do it, momentarily giving up the artist’s daze in exchange for a hasty meal while Jim looked on, making sure he ate it all.

Jim sits on the other stool, the rest of the stew poured onto a plate; he has only the two dishes.

They eat in silence. The only sounds are spoons clinking against the dishware and muffled chewing. Bill was right; the stew is rather tasteless. The beef is far too tough, with the carrots not cooked all the way through and with far too many chunks of potatoes. But it is piping hot from the stove, and it’s the first real meal he’s eaten for the day.

He’s just considering seconds—then wonders if he even should ask—when Jim pushes his plate aside and stands up. “Are you done?” he asks, gesturing to Bill’s bowl.

“Yes,” Bill answers, after some hesitation. If he had bread, he’d run it around the bowl and eat the leftover stew clinging to the edges, but there’s nothing but the bottle of water. Hell, if he were alone in his own dacha, he might use his fingers—no one was around to see him, after all—but to do such a thing in front of Jim is no better than sticking his face into the bowl and lapping like a dog.

And after Jim...catering to him all day, it doesn’t sit right. He’s been humiliated enough, no need to add to it further.

“I’ll be back,” Jim says, jabbing towards the hallway with a thumb and fist, plate and bowl balanced with spoons on top. “Only one sink.”

“In the bathroom?” Bill guesses, nose wrinkling slightly in disdain.

“Yes,” Jim says, a bit stiffly. “Not as glamourous as back in England, yes?”

There’s nothing he can say to this that won’t come out wrong, so Bill holds his tongue. He sits silently as Jim does the washing up in what is probably a very small, very cold bathroom. He ought to be grateful the place even has running water, he supposes. And given that he’s completely at Jim’s mercy, he is no position to be making any kind of complaint.

He knows what comes next. Everything before now has been about practicality, things that had to be done to ensure their survival. Even stitching up his wound was more about necessity than any real compassion. This meal was just the last item to be ticked off on some mental list Jim has compiled, one final duty.

Now the questions will begin.

Now comes the interrogation.

All he can do is sit in place on the stool, right arm helpless, ribs cracked to the point where even standing is painful. If Jim wants to throw a punch, keep him locked in the bedroom or bathroom all day, or treat him to the same methods Karla’s associates had used on him, there is nothing he can do—and he’s not sure he’d resist, either.

When Jim enters the room, dishes in hand, Bill’s eyes track him to where he dumps them on the counter on a cloth towel. Jim then turns around to face Bill, hands dangling loosely at his sides, even as his feet step closer and closer. Bill has to crane his neck to look upwards, his own hands laying meekly in his lap.

“So,” Jim says, “what am I supposed to do with you?”

“I don’t know,” Bill says. His voice is low enough to not be threatening, nothing to set Jim on edge, but loud enough to pretend his confidence hasn’t backed down. “You brought me here, you tended my wounds, you fed me.”

“So, I did,” Jim replies. He steps even closer.

Bill’s mind is trying to come up with reasons, but it’s like trying to grab cigarette smoke in his hand, closing around nothing, smoke escaping and dissolving into thin air. _Guest rights. Oxford. Geneva Convention._ But nothing will stop Jim in this hidden house in the middle of Soviet Russia, not the man who made his trainers at Sarratt peer at him from the corners of their eyes or who ran around Europe slitting throats and cracking necks without so much as a pause.

“Thank you,” Bill says, too late. There’s a slightly giddy, hysterical thought running through his mind: _he can’t kill me. He can’t kill me. He can’t._ Not after Jim risked his life to even venture inside Russia’s borders, save Bill’s life from Sergei and Ivan, or lead him to where he’s been hiding all this time.

Jim doesn’t reply. He steps even closer, and Bill finds himself shrinking away. He pictures Jim reaching for the pistol still at his belt—or perhaps cutting out the middleman altogether and simply wrapping his hands around Bill’s neck and squeezing, cutting off his air, allowing him to die slowly and painfully as Jim had nearly done all those years ago, bullet lodged in his spine in the middle of that forest.

But that will happen later—if it happens at all. First will come the inquisition.

He already knows he will tell Jim everything. He has no reason to hide anymore. He refused to tell them anything at Sarratt, no matter what they did, until he could tell it his way, to the man who had brought him down. But even then he hadn’t told it all. Some things were not for George Smiley to hear. Some things were all his own.

He had needed that, in those days in the Nursery, surrounded by people who had once admired and respected him, but now hated him with a passion they could scarcely hide. For decades he had given everything to his two masters, either to Karla or to Control. For once, just once, he had wanted to keep something for himself.

But if Jim asks?

It’s difficult to look Jim in the eye at this angle. He knows that’s deliberate, that Jim stands in this intimidating pose by design. Bill is not intimidated, however, though he _is_ wary. Jim has always had a temper, and he has every right to be bitterly angry right now, after everything that happened to him. There is a good chance he might lash out in impulsive physical violence.

“And I’m sorry,” he says. “I know it doesn’t mean anything, but I truly am.”

Jim is very still. He stares down at Bill, his face in shadow, his expression unreadable. “You’re wrong,” he finally says. “It does mean something.”

He must be telling the truth, for he moves away from his looming proximity and resumes his seat on the stool opposite Bill.

“When did it start? When did you start betraying us?” Jim asks, and the interrogation has begun.

“Not as long as you’re thinking,” Bill says. He knows that Jim’s been turning Oxford and their series of field missions together from every angle, trying to figure out when it all began. _Those were real._

“That’s not an answer,” Jim retorts, looking ready to stand up again.

“I know it’s not,” Bill says, relenting. “The early fifties. That’s when I started giving Karla some information, bits and pieces.”

“Bits and pieces,” Jim echoes.

“Yes,” Bill says. “Freelancing, as it were.” He coughs, trying to cover up the casualness in his voice. The people at Sarratt had got a little out of him, and Smiley dragged out even more. No, not dragged—he was eager to talk then, those secrets bubbling inside of him, ready to come out, like lifting the kettle lid, the steam escaping all at once. He was almost maniacal, too, about what waited for him in Russia.

“Nothing that would harm the agents in the field,” he quickly adds.

“How did you know for sure?” Jim asks, and the slope of his back seems to grow larger as he hunches forward.

Bill can’t answer that, exactly. He doesn’t recall the specifics, just a few names, American names, something to knock them off their pedestals enough for Russia to take and use for their own. Never anyone from the Circus—never Control, Smiley, or Jim.

“It didn’t involve the British,” he says at last. “Not at first.” Then, quickly: “You know Smiley; you know how he says one country is no better than the other.”

“No,” Jim says, softer. “No, but one got your loyalty in the end, didn’t it?”

Bill can only nod in response. He saw what the Americans did, how Britain allowed itself to be outmanoeuvered and worse— _lagging_ in one place without any sort of progress whatsoever. Karla didn’t have to walk him through each event, step by step, or whisper more persuasive words in his ear; Bill saw all of that on his own: Britain’s rise and fall, never to be the same great power it once was. He refused to be a part of that.  

“I had to pick a side,” he says. It’s what he told Smiley. It’s as true now as it was then. He always had that need to know where he would end up, to find out where his loyalties lay.

“Then why not just defect?” Jim says. His hands are out of sight, no doubt balled into fists on his lap. “What you did... “ He shakes his head.

Defection had been an option, once. At the beginning, after Karla had finally been assured of his loyalty, that his periodic gifts of intelligence were real and not merely a deception, a way to breach Moscow Centre for the benefit of the Circus. Karla had made the offer and invited him to come over and work for them. But Bill had never really considered it seriously. He could do more for Karla staying with the Circus than he ever could working from Moscow, and they had both known it.

He doesn’t know how to say that to Jim, though. To admit that he stayed because that was how he could do the most damage.

Fortunately Jim seems to already have known the answer to this question, so Bill doesn’t have to say it out loud. “Of course,” Jim mutters. “Why go?” He stares at Bill, slow anger burning in his eyes. “And you never had any doubts. Any regrets.” It’s not a question.

If it were Smiley sitting in front of him, Bill would say no—or refuse to answer. But this is Jim, the man he’s known—and lied to—the longest.

“Of course I did,” Bill says.

“And what did it take?” Jim counters, and even though Bill has thought, very briefly, about what he was really doing in all those decades of passing information to Karla, Jim’s finger is on Testify. It’s like prompting, asking Bill the question he already knows the answer to, and what does Jim want Bill to _do_? Does he want Bill to fall down on his knees on the cold floor and beg for forgiveness? Does he want tears? Frenzied weeping? Bowing and scraping?

“If you’re looking for a big epiphany that nearly swayed me, then you’re going to be looking for a long time,” Bill replies, fingers curling around the edges of the stool.

Jim’s expression becomes darker. “So, that’s where you’re going with this?”

“What do you want me to say, Jim?” Bill snaps. “I already apologised; I’m telling you things Smiley never got out of me—”

“Oh, and you think that that’s it?” Jim demands. “One apology, maybe two? There’s no _quota_ that can ever measure what you did to Britain, to the Circus, to—” He stops abruptly, then his hands come down to the sides of his stool, as he’s ready to push himself up and finish what has surely been playing in his head the entire time.

“I don’t regret what I did to your beloved country,” Bill snaps, even though he’s playing with fire, and he knows it. He’s not going to allow an ounce of remorse for the country that let him down, had him dancing like a puppet for a dying empire. “Nor do I care about the Circus.” As far as he’s concerned, it and Britain were linked around this together.

And at the rate he’s going, he’ll say this: he never had ties to Britain, not one out of the parade of lovers over the years that he had to shake off like moths—not even Ann, even though Smiley seemed to think so. Ann meant so little to him that she might not have existed at all.

Perhaps he could say accurately that he—as much as he could in his position—liked Smiley, or at least, respected him. Even before he met Karla, he knew Smiley was someone to look out for. Everyone knew that. The whole time Bill was with Ann, he was sure Smiley would one day land upon something he and Karla hadn’t caught and figure it out—and so he did, even if it took a few years.

All of this whirls in his head, ready to lash out at Jim, at this room, when Jim stands up.

“And what about me?” Jim says. His voice is low, tight with anger. He rests his hands on the table, bracing himself on his arms, his right shoulder so much higher than the other in this position that he looks almost grotesque. “Did you ever, even just once, think about me?”

“Of course I did,” Bill fires back. And he had. But once the die was cast, there was nothing to be done. He could never have persuaded Jim to join him, not even in the early days when they were all disappointed about the bitter aftermath of the War. And if Jim could not be with him, then he must be counted as one who stood against him.

Jim slams his hand down on the table. “Bullshit! Don’t tell me what I want to hear! I want the _truth_. By Christ, you owe me that much.”

“The truth,” Bill sneers, so fucking tired of that word and all its endless meanings. “The truth, Jim-boy, is that I protected you as long as I could. I kept you and your precious networks away from Karla. I made sure you were sent to places he wasn’t interested in. I did all that for you, and I never expected you to understand. You were—”

“Understand?” Jim shouts. “You set me up! You sent me out there!” He gestures behind him, to the cold Russian night.

“I had nothing to do with that!” Bill yells. He’s so incensed he’s on his feet without even realising it. “How the hell was I supposed to know Control would choose you?”

“You knew,” Jim says, and he’s all the more dangerous now because he’s not shouting. “There were only so many agents it could be. Czecho? My territory? Don’t stand there and tell me you didn’t know it would be me.”

“And what would you have had me do?” Bill snaps. “Tell Karla to call it all off? For the sake of an old friendship?”

Jim recoils so fast he stands up straight. “A friendship,” he says.

“A friendship,” Bill repeats. “As far as anyone else knew, we were close schoolmates and nothing else.” He laughs, harsh and cruel. “What? Did you think I’d tell Karla everything? Did you think once Karla had a loyal defector—an official _citizen_ of the Soviet Union, you should know—he had all of me?”

“It seems like it!” Jim snaps. “It seems like nothing mattered, no matter how much you claim that it did, because in the end, _I_ was the one laying on my stomach in the middle of a Russian forest.” He begins to pace in front of Bill, like a lion in its cage. “Did you know what they did to me, Bill? Did you know exactly what they did?”

Bill’s silent, unmoving, watching Jim’s fists curl in and out.

“They patched my shoulder up, moved me around so I didn’t know where I was and where I was going,” Jim begins, as soft as a mother beginning a bedtime story, unravelling it piece by piece. “They walked with me in the corridors at night, pushing me forward, sometimes on the wound they slapped some poultice on, not as nicely as I did for you. They shoved my head into a hood before we stepped on the plane, trussed me like a holiday bird ready for the oven. They finally moved me into a hospital bed and made sure I was healing up nicely for them to work on. And I planned.”

He looks at Bill, eyes narrowing. “I planned out everything I’d say, every counter to every question, every moment. I thought I could whittle away time, play as if I was slowly being broken down, let myself give when I wanted. But it didn’t work out that way, as you know; they knew everything. I didn’t know how the hell they did at the time—but now I know.”

Bill’s still in place as if held by chains, not even daring to turn his head as Jim moves out of the line of his sight. “You don’t want to hear all this, do you? You were content all this time just putting this all into a box and leaving it on a shelf you wouldn’t be able to reach. That’s why you stayed away. I wondered—I thought you’d—”

Jim passes in front of him, shaking his head, eyes more fierce than anything Bill’s ever seen, not even when his father was in one of his rages.

“I was going to—” Bill starts to say.

“No, you weren’t,” Jim interrupts brutally. “No, you weren’t.” He looks at Bill, still standing, then at his hand that’s resting on his left side. “You think that’s painful, Bill?”

For a moment, Bill thinks Jim is going to lunge forward, complete what Sergei and Ivan started, and he takes one step back. “Jim—” he tries to say again, slowly, absurdly. “Jim—”

He has no illusions about what will happen if Jim attacks him. He has one, maybe two good defensive moves in him before pain and fatigue render him useless. Just one solid blow to his injured arm will send him to the floor, and if that happens, he very much doubts he will ever get up again.

“I could show you true pain,” Jim says. “I could show you what they did to me.” He’s white with rage. “What _you_ did to me. My _friend_.”

Carefully Bill shifts his weight onto his back foot. He can grab the water bottle off the table, throw it. He can toss the table itself, throw it to the floor and put it between Jim and himself. He can bolt for the bedroom and the rifle still in there, propped up against the wall. He can—

“I already know,” he says. “I always knew. Or did you think they wouldn’t send me the reports?”

Jim reels, his hunched shoulder leading the way. He makes a sound in the back of his throat, a swallowed curse, maybe. Or a sob.

“From the moment I knew,” Bill says, “I did everything I could to get you back. But they were never going to send you back until they had got everything from you.”

“So now it’s my fault,” Jim says flatly. “For holding out under torture.”

“No!” Bill cries. “Damn it, I tried everything. But they needed to know what you knew. What Control knew. They had to know how close he was to figuring it all out.”

“They would have just killed me when it was all over,” Jim says. His voice is still too flat, too distant. He’s trying too hard.

“I would never have let them,” Bill says. “I couldn’t.” It was the one thing he had stood firm on, the one thing he had refused to let go of. Throughout it all he had persisted. When they were finished with Jim, he must be sent home. He must.

“Because you were so sorry,” Jim says. Bitterness rings in his voice, but not as strongly as it did earlier. “Because you had so many regrets.”

“Because it was you!” Bill cries. “It was you.”

He continues, more frantically than ever: “I brought you home, Jim; I _begged_ Karla to let you go home. I told him that you were worth more alive than dead; I told him that—” Here, he hesitates. Back then, he didn’t think; he was all over the place, trying to get the fucking Circus to pay for Jim’s release and storming out of offices and frightening the staff half to death, then communicating with Karla and his associates, spinning web after web in a single-minded effort to get Jim back. He didn’t even see Ann during that time, not as much as Karla wanted him to; he _had_ to get Jim back alive, no matter the cost.

“What did you say?” Jim demands, stepping forward.

Bill’s mind tries to grasp a plausible explanation, something that won’t anger Jim any further, but Jim is out of patience. He strides forward and grasps Bill by the arm—the left arm, thank the small mercies—and _squeezes._ “What did you tell Karla?”

Everything pours out: “I told them to keep you alive for more information. I told them that the Circus might have some valuable information to give up to bring you back. And then—” Then, when that failed, when the Circus fucking left Jim, didn’t even bother negotiating— “Then, I told them that you had to go back. You were old Circus, you were there for most of the glory days, and seeing you—seeing you...like that would break them. It would send the right message.”

 _Oh, we could just shoot him,_ Bill remembers saying so flagrantly, as if he didn’t care whether Jim lived or died, as if this was just another option they could explore. _But they’d expect that. They’d worry about what he said, and with him back, they’d know he gave it all up. He gave in, and that will be rather embarrassing for him, wouldn’t it? All of them._

Jim’s grip grows tighter, so tight that Bill can almost hear the bones creak. “So you sent me back to be—to be humiliated. They thought _I_ betrayed everyone! They thought—and they…” Tighter now, bruising, surely. “They threw me away, told me to forget, said this was my last order, and I fulfilled it, Bill, played some broken-down French teacher in the countryside and kept my head down and—”

“But you came here,” Bill says.

“Yes,” Jim says shortly. “I came here. I was going to see you at Sarratt when they had you, as you know. And I was going to finish what I was sure they were going to do to me.”

Bill’s blood runs cold, but he can’t say he didn’t expect that.

“But they moved you quickly.” Jim says, quiet now, but Bill can hear every word. “And I missed my chance.”

“You got it now,” Bill says. It’s putting his head in the trap, but he’s gone and spilled nearly everything. What’s the use of keeping him around any longer? There’s no one to negotiate with but Jim, no allies to come to his aid, no power or string that can be pulled. It’s just Bill and Jim, all that was meant to be.

“I do,” Jim says softly. His hand squeezes tighter.

For a moment, everything hangs in the balance. Bill stands without breathing, waiting for the sharp crack, the swift death.

But then Jim lets go and steps back, and in one fluid motion, pulls the gun from where it’s been nestled in the small of his back all this time.

So this is where it all ends, Bill thinks. With a bullet in Russia.

The way it was always meant to.

There are no words now. Nothing he can say to make it right. He will not plead for his life or embarrass them both by trying to make Jim remember happier days. All he can do now is meet his death with dignity.

Time spins out. A log cracks in the stove. Jim’s grip on the gun does not waver. Bill looks at him, remembering Oxford, _what is your dilemma?_ , nights in the Balkans, the way Jim’s voice cracked with pain on the recordings.

Slowly Jim shakes his head. He is crying, his eyes wet and glistening. He lowers the gun, his hand unsteady. He turns away, his head lowered, his hunched back the only thing Bill can see of him.

As silently as he can, Bill slips from the room. He does not stop until he’s in the bedroom. He shuts the door, closing himself in the cold darkness.

He passes a hand over his wet face, and at last he breathes.

****

Bill wakes up to the sound of footsteps outside his door. For a moment, he panics, throwing back the covers tangled around his legs, then remembers.

It’s Jim. He knows that it’s him, lingering outside, with only a plank of wood between them. If Jim comes into this room, there’s no use in fighting.

He still has the rifle leaning against the window. He still has one good arm and two working legs and possession of his mental facilities. He has the proof that Jim won’t kill him, not after last night.

But he won’t run, not because he can’t. But because he chooses not to.

If Jim decides to lean over his stool over breakfast and snap his neck, he can do it. If Jim decides to open the door and guide him to the car nearby, he can do it. Life or death—it’s Jim’s choice, not his.

All of his instincts say no. His mind is already concocting plans, trying to gauge where Jim’s traps are hidden, vowing to stay up when Jim is asleep, telling him to reach for that rifle, but Bill won’t. His eyes are sticky, hands stiff with cold, throat sore, ribs and arms muted with pain. He’s so tired, too tired to run after all this time.

He doesn’t even move to get out of bed, even though he needs a wash, a change of clothes, a look at his ribs and arm. All he can do is wait.

The door opens and Jim slips inside, a shadow sensed rather than seen or heard. No light follows him in; the lantern must be extinguished. "Bill. Get up."  
  
For half a second, Bill thinks this is part of Jim's retribution, a follow-through on his threat from earlier. He is to be deprived of sleep, made to move in the middle of the night for no reason except to keep him tired and disoriented.  
  
Then Jim says, "Someone is coming."  
  
Bill's blood runs cold. "How many?" He's out of bed in a flash. He feels no pain.  
  
"I don't know," Jim replies. "There have been a couple drifters before, people looking for shelter." He sounds uncertain, though, and Bill can’t blame ihm. After the day's activities, the odds of their visitor being harmless are not good.  
  
Bill glances at the window. There's just enough light coming in from the new snow that he can see Jim's shape by the door. He can't see anything outside, though. There might be one man creeping toward them. There might be an army.

He thinks fast, a spy’s gift for turning calamity into opportunity, danger to himself into danger to the enemy. "Is there a root cellar? Space under the house?"

"Yes," Jim says.  
  
"Go there now," Bill orders. He slept fully clothed, so he has only to grab the rifle by the window. and he’s as prepared as he can be. The gun fits his hand wonderfully, adding to his confidence that he can get them out of this situation,  
  
"What are you talking about?" Jim snaps. "We have to—"  
  
"Go there _now_ ," Bill snaps. He has no idea how much time they have. Standing around arguing won't do them any favours.  
  
If it's Karla's operatives, nothing he or Jim does will make much of a difference, except maybe to determine how they die.  
  
But if it's one man, that's something Bill is much better equipped to deal with. He might be unshaven and reeking of blood, but his clothing and his boots are unmistakably made from quality. And more importantly, he is easily able to summon the air of authority and arrogance needed to cow a desperate man and send him away in this weather.  
  
And there's something else, too. Something he can't think about too closely. He only knows that he cannot — must not — let Jim endanger himself.

As Bill starts towards the door, Jim's eyes flicker to his hands, right fingers closed not as tightly around the handle as they should be. "Bill," he begins.

"Move!" Bill snaps.  
  
Jim, damn him, stays rooted to the floor, and for a wild moment, Bill thinks about pointing the gun at him.  
  
He'd pay for that later, and part of him recoils at such an action, but if he has to use it as a threat to get Jim moving, he will. Jim's safety is paramount.  
  
But in the end, he doesn't have to. Jim wordlessly steps aside to allow him to pass, a clear signal. Bill nods, eyes already forward and ears trying to hear beyond the quietness of the house. He does not focus on his stiff gait, his careful hold on the gun. Anything else is irrelevant.  
  
Soundlessly, he stalks through the hallway, making note of Jim slipping away, down to safety. Bill pictures Jim crouched in the root cellar, staying close enough to the door to bolt or attack, but far enough that a first glance won't pick him up. And Bill knows he cannot let anyone else through that door, even if it means putting his body between whoever’s out there and Jim.

Every little sound makes him tighten his grip further on his rifle—the crackling of the fire in the stove, his own footsteps on the creaky floorboards, a soft crunch that might be boots walking on the snow.  
  
Then, there’s a rattling near the back, metal jiggling frantically in place. Someone is trying the door.  
  
Bill moves so quickly that his ribs protest, but his feet whirl around easily enough, pivoting him around the corner towards the sound—right into the table.  
  
Bill muffles the sharp inhale quickly so the presence outside doesn't hear an occupant waiting near the door, or Jim doesn't take it as a sign to charge up the stairs. Whatever happens, Jim must not come out.

For a moment, he fears that he’s damaged something for good. He imagines a rib unfolding, hanging like a hinge. His hand claps on the spot, pressing down at the very tips of his fingers, realising he’s bent double, totally ineffective should someone charge through the door right now.  
  
_Get up_ , he snaps at himself. _Get up!_

And then he hears it—voices: two men, Russian, no one he recognises.

They are either trained operatives pretending to be men in need of shelter from the cold, or they are exactly who they seem to be. Either way, they cannot be allowed inside the house.

The first step is the hardest, pain knifing through his ribs, making him clench his jaw to stay silent. He moves as swiftly as he can through the small shack, while the door rattles harder as the men outside grow more desperate to get in.

At the back door he stops just long to disengage the safety, then raises the rifle so it’s aimed at the ceiling. He glances behind him once, making sure Jim hasn’t left his hideaway, then unlocks the door and flings it open in one motion.

The men are startled by his sudden appearance — even more so by the rifle he aims at them. They’re both wearing tattered coats; one has a dirty knit cap pulled down low. Even with the reflected moonlight off the snow, their faces are mostly shadowed.

“Who are you?” Bill demands. He speaks Russian, the rifle aimed at a spot in between them, where even a tiny movement to either side will mean he hits at least one of them. “What are you doing here?”

One of them starts to answer, but Bill doesn’t give him the chance. He won’t be able to hold the rifle steady for too long, and he can’t let them see that. They need to be sent on their way as swiftly as possible.

“You are trespassing on state property,” he says. He speaks to them the way he used to deal with the shabby lamplighters, or the clerks and analysts who fell afoul of his temper. He is every inch the noble aristocrat then, head and shoulders above these two tramps, no matter what the Party might say about equality. “Leave now or you will be shot.”

Their hands fly up. “Please!” one of them says. “We need a place to stay.”

“You can’t stay here,” Bill says, his voice as cold as the star-studded sky. “Now show me your papers.”

Those four little words strike fear into the heart of even the most innocent Soviet citizen. The two men exchange a quick glance, then as one they turn and bolt into the darkness.

Bill watches them go, looking for signs of anyone else on the periphery, anyone watching this little exchange. But there are no red flares of cigarettes, no sounds except boots crunching on snow. Either their watchers are very good at what they do, or else this was genuine, and nothing but what it seemed.

The rifle barrel plunges downward; he can’t hold it any longer. His shoulders sag as he backs into the room. He hopes Jim couldn’t hear all that. Without any grasp of the language, the words they exchanged could have been anything, even an order to lay down his weapon and surrender the spy hiding under the house.

Quickly, Bill shuts and locks the door, allowing himself a moment to collect himself. His ribs flare more than ever, as if protesting the too-rapid beating of his heart, and again, he carefully feels what he can over his coat. He’ll have to look at it, but now’s not the time. He has to tell Jim everything is all right.

The Circus—to their credit—has trained it out of him never to announce his presence, even when it seems all might be well. So there’s no shout of “Jim! All clear!,” even when he’s sure those tramps are far enough away from the house. Suspicion is a spy’s trade, and although he cannot be considered one now—not Karla’s or Smiley’s—it still stays with him.

As quickly as he can without agitating his injuries any further, Bill walks through the room into the hallway. He has no idea where the root cellar actually is, but he’d be a poor spy—former one, but all the same—if he couldn’t figure that out. Carefully watching his feet, he tests the floorboards, keeping an eye out for a hinge or a handle someone may use to pull the door up.

At last—he’s passed his eye over it at least twice, he knows—Bill finds it and taps his old Circus pinpoint on the door. No one else knows it, not even Karla, and he hopes Jim remembers.

After a few seconds, Jim answers back, tapping his own pinpoint, and Bill removes his foot at the same time Jim pushes the door upwards.

It’s dark with no pull chain for a light—though Jim of course wouldn’t have been so foolish to turn it on—but Bill can see Jim’s face easily enough, taut and eyes darting behind him. He cannot quite see where Jim’s hands are, but Bill suspects Jim hadn’t simply bunkered down here and hoped for the best. No, he’d have a weapon—a hidden pistol, a butcher knife, something heavy enough to to be used as a projectile.

“Who were they?” Jim asks.

“Wanderers,” Bill says, “like you told me. But they’re gone now.”

“Did they hurt you?” Jim asks.

“No,” Bill says, “not at all, why do you think that?”

Wordlessly, Jim nods towards Bill’s stomach, where his hand’s still clutched at his left side, pressing as if to hold in the pain.

“It’s nothing,” Bill says. He forces himself to drop his hand and lower his arm back to his side; the stitched bullet wound thanks him for that.  “I’m fine.” After their “discussion” earlier, he’s not too keen on the idea of holding too much of Jim’s attention. It’s been hours, but that doesn’t mean anything. He doesn’t even know what time it is, although his body tells him it’s after midnight.

“Clearly you’re not fine,” Jim says. He walks unerringly toward the table and lights the lantern. It didn’t even get knocked over when Bill struck the table.

After so long in near-darkness, the lantern seems incredibly bright. Reflexively Bill glances toward the windows, but they remain blacked-out. And if any light seeps through the edges, or through the bedroom window, what difference does it make? He’s already announced their presence to anyone close enough to see or hear their little shack.

“You’re no use to either of us if you can’t even walk,” Jim says.

“Damn you, I can walk,” Bill says, and proves it by hobbling toward the back door. He wants to double check the lock.

Jim lets him go, giving him this chance to preserve his dignity—such as it is. Bill ensures the door is locked, then turns back to where Jim stands patiently waiting.

He doesn’t want to admit that he needs help, that every step sends knives stabbing through his chest. He would almost rather have a return to the angry shouting from before. But to go on as though nothing happened is foolish. If he were alone here, with no one to suffer from his pride but himself, that would be one thing. But there is Jim to think of.

He’s about to speak, to ask Jim what he had in mind, when Jim says, “Why did you do that?”

He could pretend he doesn’t know what Jim is talking about, but that would demean them both. Walking slowly, trying to ease his weight from one foot to the other, he says, “I knew I could do it. And you don’t even speak Russian.”

It’s not the answer Jim deserves, but it’s the only one he’s capable of giving just now.

Thankfully Jim doesn’t push. He just nods. “Go on in there,” he says with a gesture to the rear of the house. “Take your coat off. I want to have a look at those ribs.”

That’s one of the last things he wants, but there doesn’t seem to be any point in arguing. Wearily Bill nods and heads for the cold little bathroom.

He sits on the lid of the toilet, then, with some difficulty, begins tugging off his coat. Thinking it'll be best to get the worst over with, he starts on his right arm, using his left hand—albeit clumsily—to pull the right sleeve down. Even though he's moving as slow as he can, the sleeve still catches on his elbow and pulls against his stitches.

He hisses slightly, but continues until the sleeve is all the way off. The next part is easier, mostly pulling as carefully as he can with his right hand and shaking his left arm, allowing gravity to do the rest. The coat falls on the floor, but Bill doesn’t move to pick it up. It hardly matters, anyway.

Embarrassingly, that whole episode gave Jim enough time to come into the bathroom with the first aid kit and simply stand there and watch Bill fumble with such a simple task. “You could have asked me for help,” he says.

“I could do it, Jim,” Bill says shortly, then waves his left hand impatiently. “I’m far from helpless.”

“No,” Jim says, voice low, “you’re not.”

And without further ceremony, Jim kneels on the cold tile floor, hands reaching for Bill’s stomach. Bill stays absolutely still, hardly daring to breathe, as Jim’s right palm presses down gently at first, then a bit harder.

A pained groan escapes his lips before he can restrain himself, and he wonders if this will be a part of Jim’s revenge, hurting before healing, but Jim immediately takes his hand away as soon as Bill makes a sound. “How does it hurt compared to yesterday?” he asks.

“Worse,” Bill says shortly, “considering the corner of your kitchen table drove itself into my ribs.”

Jim only nods. There’s no flash of vindication in his eyes at Bill’s accident, nor amusement. “We never got to examine them yesterday, I recall.”

“Well, we were rather busy,” Bill retorts. He really would rather not rehash last evening, no thank you. Even if he is willing to allow Jim to do whatever he wants with him, Bill’s still not ready to think of all the ugly things they threw out into the open, those wounds left to fester for decades.

Jim doesn’t respond to this. He probably would like to forget the whole thing, too. Instead he lifts the lantern. “Hold this.”

Bill takes it in his left hand. “As I said,” he says with a faint touch of his earlier haughty tone. “Far from helpless.”

Jim doesn’t exactly smile, but his mouth softens. Like he’s thinking about it. “I’m going to lift your shirt now,” he says. “I want to get a good look at them.”

There is a curious gentleness to the way Jim’s hand takes hold of the hem of his shirt, then slowly lifts it to reveal his bare abdomen. The cold air makes him want to shiver, but Bill does his best to repress it; he knows all too well that shivering will only exacerbate the pain.

Jim raises the shirt a little higher, then stops, his breath hissing between his teeth. “Jesus, Bill.”

By craning his neck, he can just see it over the bunched fabric of his shirt: the ugly dark bruising on his side where Ivan kicked him in his dacha, smashing him into the floor. It looks bad, all right.

Jim looks up at him. “There really isn’t much I can do,” he says. He frowns, his mouth drawn down. “If they were cracked before, you could have really broken them with the impact on the table.”

“Even if I did,” Bill says, “what can you do about it?” The days of wrapping broken ribs are in the past, the danger of pneumonia from shallow breathing too much of a risk. All he can do is suffer for the weeks it will take them to heal.

“I can make sure you haven’t punctured a lung,” Jim says.

“Unless you have an X-ray machine, I seriously doubt you can diagnose me accurately,” Bill dryly replies. “But if you did manage to drag one out here and get it in working order, I’ll be very impressed.”

Jim gives him a familiar exasperated look. “Are you going to cooperate or not?”

Bill raises his hands before remembering his stitches, then slowly lowers them down to dangle loosely at his sides. Remembering the lantern, he slowly raises his left hand, smiling sheepishly. “I will, I will.”

Jim’s hands are gentle when they lightly touch his ribs again, feeling carefully over the exposed skin. Bill determinedly looks up at the ceiling, resisting the urge to curl his fingers around the seat or stiffen up.

Memories slowly begin to trickle into his mind like melting ice, of hands slowly tracing bared skin, as if there was nothing but time left in the world. He remembers bottled vodka, sometimes knocked over in the haste to get to the bed, or mugs of paint-muddied water that got jostled off of tables. The curtains were always pulled down, but they saw enough of each other in the slips of sunlight or moonlight, then learned not to need those hints at all.  

But this is so very different from the last time—when even was the last time they were like this, Jim’s hands on his bare flesh, or even alone together in the same room?

Jim’s voice is softer now, as if he too is recalling those times. Whether those memories are now tainted is something Bill prefers not to know. “Bill, I don’t think anything is broken, but I don’t know for sure.” His fingers trace gently upwards, pushing slightly against one of the buttons of Bill’s shirt. “I have to take this off.”

“For what?” Bill asks absurdly.

“To listen to your breathing,” Jim says calmly enough, but he doesn’t look at Bill. “I’m afraid the kit didn’t come with a stethoscope.”

A hundred excuses flash through his mind. It’s too cold. It’s unnecessary. The lantern he’s still holding is too bright, revealing all the flaws in his aging body. He hasn’t willingly exposed so much of himself to another person in far too long. How can he bear Jim’s scrutiny?

But he says none of that out loud. He just nods, already too breathless. “Right.”

He starts to put the lantern down, but Jim shakes his head. “Hold that,” he says.

Bill freezes. Does Jim mean to—

Then Jim’s hands are on his shirt, deftly undoing the buttons one at a time. His movements are neat and precise, no tugging of the material that might cause pain. Only near the end, on the topmost button, does his right hand jerk a little, and Bill realises that his back must be hurting from kneeling and leaning forward like this.

Jim parts his shirt, revealing his chest. Bill can’t help shivering then, and not only from the cold. When he hands the lantern over, he all but thrusts it at Jim’s face, jerking his arm out of the sleeve and letting the fabric dangle on the floor.

Still on his knees, Jim nods solemnly. “I’m going to listen to your lungs,” he says. “Just try to breathe normally, if you can.”

Bill isn’t at all sure that is possible, but he nods. “All right.”

Jim shifts a little closer, then lowers his head to Bill’s chest, his face turned toward the light, the better to listen. His collar brushes Bill’s stomach, and Bill flinches back in spite of himself, but Jim doesn’t seem to notice.

“Just breathe,” Jim says, and Bill exhales slowly and breathes in everything that he ever loved about Jim Prideaux.

That unexpected gentleness, so at odds with his size and temper. The softness of his hair, already thinning when they met. The warmth of his eyes, even when so intent and focused, as they are now. The way he never shied from intimacy, from touch, from all those things that they should never have let happen.

Bill closes his eyes, and for the first time in uncounted years, he wishes things could have happened differently.

He knows intellectually that whatever bright, quiet future they might have had was immediately curtailed because of the times they were living in. There was a war, after all, and neither of them were content to stay at Oxford behind their books and wait it out. They both needed to fight, needed to take a stand, needed to say at the end of the day that they were noble, good men.

Jim didn’t follow him to the Circus immediately. Bill had raged when Fanshawe delivered the news that they were still considering Jim Prideaux, who at that time had no military record, no significant connections or wealth, and no “outstanding reason” to be seriously considered. He had dreamed of Jim training with him at Sarratt, them being sent out to the corners of the world to fight the Axis powers, not having to say goodbye after Oxford, but those were dashed.

He threatened to say no to the Circus, even though both he and Fanshawe knew he wouldn’t. But for those few minutes, he’d made all sorts of threats, vowing that the Circus would be sorry if they didn’t snatch Jim up and how they’d pay for such neglect. Fanshawe had allowed him this, waiting patiently for Bill to be done to tell him that the Circus had not rejected Jim, only was holding his application status at the present. After the war—

 _He could be dead after the war!_ Bill had snapped, and Fanshawe had to wait a few more minutes before attempting to calm him again.

But now, Bill imagines: no war, no Circus, no Karla. Already, it’s ridiculous, this fantasy that could never be, but his eyes remain closed, trying not to feel Jim’s ear against his chest, his steady hand listening for Bill’s heartbeat. No war, no war, no war…

He would have had to become Lord Haydon after his father passed, of course, but he could have still painted. He didn’t have to worry about becoming one of those starving artists, after all. And Jim—Jim could have taught slow-blinking boys French in a quiet town, close enough where Bill could come down on his bike in case Jim forgot a textbook. They could go to lunch, sit across from each other at tables and complain about idiot lords and idiot boys, and creep home—where, exactly he did not know—together. Yes, Bill would have had to marry, but it would have meant nothing. He knew how to pick girls, and he’d pick someone who wouldn’t mind being independent and knew how to be quiet and still did her duty as a wife to bring another Haydon into the world.

And Jim, Jim would have still kept teaching and lay with his head on Bill’s chest at night like on those sleepy not-quite-mornings—

“Bill,” Jim now says, and the dream dissolves, with Bill left sitting on a toilet lid with Jim’s ear still pressed against his chest in a cold, grey bathroom in a tiny shack in Russia. “Bill.” His palm is still splayed on Bill’s chest. “Bill, you need to breathe in for me again.”

Bill collects himself, if reluctantly, and obeys, then allows his chest to sink in, then let out again, half-closing his eyes.

“Not broken,” Jim says, voice barely above a whisper.

“Good,” Bill replies, thinking his voice is hardly louder. Jim’s looking up at him now, palm still resting on his chest, quiet and ever-watching eyes surely taking a measurement of every inch of Bill’s thoughts, whirling clumsily in his mind.

Years pass between them, and Bill can feel the heat of close contact, the roughened fingertips and callouses of his palm in this very moment that led them here.

And Jim begins to rise, hand removing itself from Bill’s heart, and Bill acts from instinct.

“Don’t,” he breathes, and Jim goes still, his hand hovering a scant inch above Bill’s chest, his eyes wide and fixed on Bill’s face.

Jim is so close, and Bill can’t help himself. He needs to touch. To remember, just this once, what it felt like to love this man. He starts to raise his right hand, heedless of the pain. Just one touch, that’s all he asks.

He’s barely begun when Jim’s gaze flickers to his hand, tracking the movement, and Bill lets it fall back again. No. He can’t. He hasn’t earned the right to touch Jim yet. Maybe he never will.

But Jim does not pull away. He remains where he is, so very close. And he is the first one to move, to slowly lower his hand until it rests atop Bill’s heart once more. He rises up a little on his knees, but he never once looks away. “Why did you save me back there?” he asks.

Bill gives the only answer he can. The only answer he’s ever had. “Because it was you.”

He bows his head, leaning in. He is defeated. No more secrets. No more lies.

“It was you.”

And Jim is there, his forehead meeting Bill’s, the touch making them both shiver.

“I’m sorry,” he says, his breath filling the space between them.

“I know,” Jim says, and it sounds like forgiveness. “I know,” he repeats.

It’s Jim who leans in first, hand still on Bill’s heart, and slots his mouth against Bill’s.

Bill closes his eyes again, holding himself back, hands clenched tightly on the seat, hardly daring to believe that this is happening. When he opens his eyes again, surely, Jim will just be rising from his perch on the floor, perhaps turning to pick up his bag, or Bill will wake up in his bed in the dacha, hand already reaching for the bottle of vodka on the nightstand.

But this is real, so painfully real, so sweetly real.

They’re both cold and tired, aching and bloody, and perhaps the setting isn’t exactly ideal, but there is no way Bill is ever going to pull away, not with Jim sliding his hand up Bill’s left knee and leaning further in. He can feel the points of contact between them, so steady and still and warm, the chilliness of the room all but gone.

All he can do is stay still and allow this after so long.

And suddenly, he feels Jim pulling back, hands sliding away, and Bill startles, snatching at Jim’s shoulders before he fully knows what he’s doing. “What are you doing?” he asks, and his voice comes out breathless, as if being startled awake.

Jim shakes his head, fully taking his hands away, shoulders tense. “I only thought—you weren’t—”

 _“Jim,”_ Bill breathes. “No, no, I…” He forces himself to focus, grasp the faltering words and turn them into something true: “Jim, it’s been so long. But I want you.” He then repeats, a little louder: “I want _you_.”

He’s already concocting a speech in his head, about to tell Jim of the letter he’d written to Fanshawe while they were both at Oxford, of the mugs of tea emptied, of the paper being crushed by his elbow several times, of the pen writing and writing without ever stopping, not quite thinking what was coming out, only thinking about Jim Prideaux. He wants to talk about the canvases Jim had helped set up for his disastrous gallery showing, the paint smudges on their clothes, the night time walks when it seemed like the war was a world away.

But instead, Bill leans forward, reaching out with his good hand to touch Jim’s shoulder. Jim stiffens, and Bill pulls away, worried that he’s hurt Jim, but Jim’s hand clasps over his, guiding him to a point where Bill cannot feel the unevenness, the bumps, the hurts. Bill lets his hand be moved up, where his fingers gently rest at the back of Jim’s neck, feeling the hard nubs underneath his skin.

Bill is the one to close the distance between them now, and Jim’s hands gravitate towards his heart and his knee as they kiss again.

In this space, everything—the secrets, the lies, the masks—are gone. It’s just the two of them now, relearning each other after spending so much time in the dark. They are no longer the carefree boys at Oxford, the world at their fingertips, nor are they the ships passing through the night, dancing around each other and never quite meeting. All these decades have changed them, and there’s no going back.

But they can go forward together.

****

Light is barely creeping in the little cabin when Bill wakes up. He doesn't move at first, content to stay where he is for the moment. With the stove in front of him and Jim at his back, he's wonderfully warm.  
  
They've been here a week and it's time to leave. They've only lingered this long in order to give Bill a chance to heal a little. He walked part of the perimeter with Jim yesterday, checking the status of their traps and tells. He didn't get too far, as the uneven ground eventually made walking too painful, but he made it far enough that they both knew the time had come.  
  
Behind him, Jim sits up, the blankets falling to the mattress they dragged out here last night. He briefly rests a hand on the back of Bill's neck. "Ready?"

Bill lets himself lean into that touch, just for a moment. This is what they have now. Brief touches. Light smiles. Long silences. There are miles to plumb between them, and they are still just treading on the surface. For now that's safer. At least here they know there is solid ground.

It doesn't take them long to get ready. A lifetime of living with one foot already out the door makes it easy. It helps that there is little to pack, though Jim has revealed that he has a cache of food, weapons, and warm clothing hidden in a location on the other side of the city. They will head there first.  
  
After that, well, Bill doesn't know. They don't have very many options. They're both wanted in the East, and he can't or won't live in the West. Between them, those two superpowers have staked out much of the globe; there aren't many places he and Jim _can_ go. It's not something they've talked about too much, though. Too many dangers lurk in those words. Too many wounds.

It won't be easy getting out. Every day they stayed here meant tighter security, borders secured against them. It darkly amuses Bill to wonder if Karla has made discreet inquiries of the Circus on the status of his missing Hero.  
  
But they will be fine. He is certain of that. Jim knows places and Bill knows people and together they are formidable in the field. They will make it.  
  
In less than an hour, they've washed up, eaten one last meal, and are ready to go. Jim slams the boot of the car closed and that's it.  
  
"Wait," Bill says. He's been debating with himself for days on whether or not he was really going to do this. Now that the moment has come, though, it seems ridiculous to think he ever considered not doing it. He reaches into his coat and pulls out a folded piece of paper torn from his notebook, the one he had grabbed so impulsively when they fled his dacha. He holds it out.  
  
Jim takes it with a slight tilt of his head, curious. He unfolds it and stares, his expression slack with wonder. When he looks up again, he still seems too astonished to speak.  
  
It's a good likeness, Bill is pleased to say, especially given that he had limited range of motion in his arm while working on it. It took longer than he would have liked, but he was forced to work by flickering lantern light while Jim slept, keeping this one last secret.  
  
"It's incredible," Jim finally breathes. "You...you never painted me before."  
  
"No," Bill agrees. Oxford is long behind them, taking with it those days of painting and eager debate, cricket and vodka, stolen kisses on the quad when no one could see, long nights wrapped about each other in the dark. “But I thought I could draw you."  
  
Jim smiles. "You did a good job." He folds the drawing again and carefully places it in his inside coat pocket, next to his chest. "Thank you."  
  
"Don't mention it," Bill says with a smug little smile.  
  
Jim shakes his head, but his eyes are full of reluctant affection. "Artists. All the same, you lot."  
  
Bill gets in the car, easing in slowly so he doesn't jostle his aching ribs any more than he has to. "I could say the same about us spies."  
  
Jim climbs in and starts the car. "You could," he says. "But I don't think that's right. That was my dilemma, you see."  
  
Yes, it would be. And rightfully so. And though he thinks—he hopes—he knows the answer, Bill asks quietly, "And have you solved it?"  
  
"Oh yes," Jim says. "I actually haven't got a dilemma. That's why I'm here."  
  
He pulls the car onto the road, leaving the little cabin behind. Yesterday, the sun warmed enough to melt some of the snow, only for it to freeze again overnight. The roads will be treacherous with ice; they'll have to go slow.  
  
That's all right, Bill thinks. They'll make it.  



End file.
